White Fang | Project Gutenberg (2024)

PART I

CHAPTER I
THE TRAIL OF THE MEAT

Dark spruce forest frowned on either side the frozen waterway. The trees hadbeen stripped by a recent wind of their white covering of frost, and theyseemed to lean towards each other, black and ominous, in the fading light. Avast silence reigned over the land. The land itself was a desolation, lifeless,without movement, so lone and cold that the spirit of it was not even that ofsadness. There was a hint in it of laughter, but of a laughter more terriblethan any sadness—a laughter that was mirthless as the smile of thesphinx, a laughter cold as the frost and partaking of the grimness ofinfallibility. It was the masterful and incommunicable wisdom of eternitylaughing at the futility of life and the effort of life. It was the Wild, thesavage, frozen-hearted Northland Wild.

But there was life, abroad in the land and defiant. Down the frozenwaterway toiled a string of wolfish dogs. Their bristly fur was rimed withfrost. Their breath froze in the air as it left their mouths, spouting forth inspumes of vapour that settled upon the hair of their bodies and formed intocrystals of frost. Leather harness was on the dogs, and leather traces attachedthem to a sled which dragged along behind. The sled was without runners. It wasmade of stout birch-bark, and its full surface rested on the snow. The frontend of the sled was turned up, like a scroll, in order to force down and underthe bore of soft snow that surged like a wave before it. On the sled, securelylashed, was a long and narrow oblong box. There were other things on thesled—blankets, an axe, and a coffee-pot and frying-pan; but prominent,occupying most of the space, was the long and narrow oblong box.

In advance of the dogs, on wide snowshoes, toiled a man. At the rear of thesled toiled a second man. On the sled, in the box, lay a third man whose toilwas over,—a man whom the Wild had conquered and beaten down until hewould never move nor struggle again. It is not the way of the Wild to likemovement. Life is an offence to it, for life is movement; and the Wild aimsalways to destroy movement. It freezes the water to prevent it running to thesea; it drives the sap out of the trees till they are frozen to their mightyhearts; and most ferociously and terribly of all does the Wild harry and crushinto submission man—man who is the most restless of life, ever in revoltagainst the dictum that all movement must in the end come to the cessation ofmovement.

But at front and rear, unawed and indomitable, toiled the two men who were notyet dead. Their bodies were covered with fur and soft-tanned leather. Eyelashesand cheeks and lips were so coated with the crystals from their frozen breaththat their faces were not discernible. This gave them the seeming of ghostlymasques, undertakers in a spectral world at the funeral of some ghost. Butunder it all they were men, penetrating the land of desolation and mockery andsilence, puny adventurers bent on colossal adventure, pitting themselvesagainst the might of a world as remote and alien and pulseless as the abyssesof space.

They travelled on without speech, saving their breath for the work of theirbodies. On every side was the silence, pressing upon them with a tangiblepresence. It affected their minds as the many atmospheres of deep water affectthe body of the diver. It crushed them with the weight of unending vastness andunalterable decree. It crushed them into the remotest recesses of their ownminds, pressing out of them, like juices from the grape, all the false ardoursand exaltations and undue self-values of the human soul, until they perceivedthemselves finite and small, specks and motes, moving with weak cunning andlittle wisdom amidst the play and inter-play of the great blind elements andforces.

An hour went by, and a second hour. The pale light of the short sunless day wasbeginning to fade, when a faint far cry arose on the still air. It soaredupward with a swift rush, till it reached its topmost note, where it persisted,palpitant and tense, and then slowly died away. It might have been a lost soulwailing, had it not been invested with a certain sad fierceness and hungryeagerness. The front man turned his head until his eyes met the eyes of the manbehind. And then, across the narrow oblong box, each nodded to the other.

A second cry arose, piercing the silence with needle-like shrillness. Both menlocated the sound. It was to the rear, somewhere in the snow expanse they hadjust traversed. A third and answering cry arose, also to the rear and to theleft of the second cry.

“They’re after us, Bill,” said the man at the front.

His voice sounded hoarse and unreal, and he had spoken with apparent effort.

“Meat is scarce,” answered his comrade. “I ain’t seen arabbit sign for days.”

Thereafter they spoke no more, though their ears were keen for thehunting-cries that continued to rise behind them.

At the fall of darkness they swung the dogs into a cluster of spruce trees onthe edge of the waterway and made a camp. The coffin, at the side of the fire,served for seat and table. The wolf-dogs, clustered on the far side of thefire, snarled and bickered among themselves, but evinced no inclination tostray off into the darkness.

“Seems to me, Henry, they’re stayin’ remarkable close tocamp,” Bill commented.

Henry, squatting over the fire and settling the pot of coffee with a piece ofice, nodded. Nor did he speak till he had taken his seat on the coffin andbegun to eat.

“They know where their hides is safe,” he said. “They’dsooner eat grub than be grub. They’re pretty wise, them dogs.”

Bill shook his head. “Oh, I don’t know.”

His comrade looked at him curiously. “First time I ever heard you sayanything about their not bein’ wise.”

“Henry,” said the other, munching with deliberation the beans hewas eating, “did you happen to notice the way them dogs kicked up when Iwas a-feedin’ ’em?”

“They did cut up more’n usual,” Henry acknowledged.

“How many dogs ’ve we got, Henry?”

“Six.”

“Well, Henry . . . ” Bill stopped for a moment, in order that hiswords might gain greater significance. “As I was sayin’, Henry,we’ve got six dogs. I took six fish out of the bag. I gave one fish toeach dog, an’, Henry, I was one fish short.”

“You counted wrong.”

“We’ve got six dogs,” the other reiterated dispassionately.“I took out six fish. One Ear didn’t get no fish. I came back tothe bag afterward an’ got ’m his fish.”

“We’ve only got six dogs,” Henry said.

“Henry,” Bill went on. “I won’t say they was all dogs,but there was seven of ’m that got fish.”

Henry stopped eating to glance across the fire and count the dogs.

“There’s only six now,” he said.

“I saw the other one run off across the snow,” Bill announced withcool positiveness. “I saw seven.”

Henry looked at him commiseratingly, and said, “I’ll be almightyglad when this trip’s over.”

“What d’ye mean by that?” Bill demanded.

“I mean that this load of ourn is gettin’ on your nerves, an’that you’re beginnin’ to see things.”

“I thought of that,” Bill answered gravely. “An’ so,when I saw it run off across the snow, I looked in the snow an’ saw itstracks. Then I counted the dogs an’ there was still six of ’em. Thetracks is there in the snow now. D’ye want to look at ’em?I’ll show ’em to you.”

Henry did not reply, but munched on in silence, until, the meal finished, hetopped it with a final cup of coffee. He wiped his mouth with the back of hishand and said:

“Then you’re thinkin’ as it was—”

A long wailing cry, fiercely sad, from somewhere in the darkness, hadinterrupted him. He stopped to listen to it, then he finished his sentence witha wave of his hand toward the sound of the cry, “—one ofthem?”

Bill nodded. “I’d a blame sight sooner think that than anythingelse. You noticed yourself the row the dogs made.”

Cry after cry, and answering cries, were turning the silence into a bedlam.From every side the cries arose, and the dogs betrayed their fear by huddlingtogether and so close to the fire that their hair was scorched by the heat.Bill threw on more wood, before lighting his pipe.

“I’m thinking you’re down in the mouth some,” Henrysaid.

“Henry . . . ” He sucked meditatively at his pipe for some timebefore he went on. “Henry, I was a-thinkin’ what a blame sightluckier he is than you an’ me’ll ever be.”

He indicated the third person by a downward thrust of the thumb to the box onwhich they sat.

“You an’ me, Henry, when we die, we’ll be lucky if we getenough stones over our carcases to keep the dogs off of us.”

“But we ain’t got people an’ money an’ all the rest,like him,” Henry rejoined. “Long-distance funerals issomethin’ you an’ me can’t exactly afford.”

“What gets me, Henry, is what a chap like this, that’s a lord orsomething in his own country, and that’s never had to bother about grubnor blankets; why he comes a-buttin’ round the Godforsaken ends of theearth—that’s what I can’t exactly see.”

“He might have lived to a ripe old age if he’d stayed athome,” Henry agreed.

Bill opened his mouth to speak, but changed his mind. Instead, he pointedtowards the wall of darkness that pressed about them from every side. There wasno suggestion of form in the utter blackness; only could be seen a pair of eyesgleaming like live coals. Henry indicated with his head a second pair, and athird. A circle of the gleaming eyes had drawn about their camp. Now and againa pair of eyes moved, or disappeared to appear again a moment later.

The unrest of the dogs had been increasing, and they stampeded, in a surge ofsudden fear, to the near side of the fire, cringing and crawling about the legsof the men. In the scramble one of the dogs had been overturned on the edge ofthe fire, and it had yelped with pain and fright as the smell of its singedcoat possessed the air. The commotion caused the circle of eyes to shiftrestlessly for a moment and even to withdraw a bit, but it settled down againas the dogs became quiet.

“Henry, it’s a blame misfortune to be out of ammunition.”

Bill had finished his pipe and was helping his companion to spread the bed offur and blanket upon the spruce boughs which he had laid over the snow beforesupper. Henry grunted, and began unlacing his moccasins.

“How many cartridges did you say you had left?” he asked.

“Three,” came the answer. “An’ I wisht ’twasthree hundred. Then I’d show ’em what for, damn ’em!”

He shook his fist angrily at the gleaming eyes, and began securely to prop hismoccasins before the fire.

“An’ I wisht this cold snap’d break,” he went on.“It’s ben fifty below for two weeks now. An’ I wishtI’d never started on this trip, Henry. I don’t like the looks ofit. I don’t feel right, somehow. An’ while I’m wishin’,I wisht the trip was over an’ done with, an’ you an’ mea-sittin’ by the fire in Fort McGurry just about now an’ playingcribbage—that’s what I wisht.”

Henry grunted and crawled into bed. As he dozed off he was aroused by hiscomrade’s voice.

“Say, Henry, that other one that come in an’ got a fish—whydidn’t the dogs pitch into it? That’s what’s botherin’me.”

“You’re botherin’ too much, Bill,” came the sleepyresponse. “You was never like this before. You jes’ shut up now,an’ go to sleep, an’ you’ll be all hunkydory in themornin’. Your stomach’s sour, that’s what’sbotherin’ you.”

The men slept, breathing heavily, side by side, under the one covering. Thefire died down, and the gleaming eyes drew closer the circle they had flungabout the camp. The dogs clustered together in fear, now and again snarlingmenacingly as a pair of eyes drew close. Once their uproar became so loud thatBill woke up. He got out of bed carefully, so as not to disturb the sleep ofhis comrade, and threw more wood on the fire. As it began to flame up, thecircle of eyes drew farther back. He glanced casually at the huddling dogs. Herubbed his eyes and looked at them more sharply. Then he crawled back into theblankets.

“Henry,” he said. “Oh, Henry.”

Henry groaned as he passed from sleep to waking, and demanded,“What’s wrong now?”

“Nothin’,” came the answer; “only there’s sevenof ’em again. I just counted.”

Henry acknowledged receipt of the information with a grunt that slid into asnore as he drifted back into sleep.

In the morning it was Henry who awoke first and routed his companion out ofbed. Daylight was yet three hours away, though it was already sixo’clock; and in the darkness Henry went about preparing breakfast, whileBill rolled the blankets and made the sled ready for lashing.

“Say, Henry,” he asked suddenly, “how many dogs did you saywe had?”

“Six.”

“Wrong,” Bill proclaimed triumphantly.

“Seven again?” Henry queried.

“No, five; one’s gone.”

“The hell!” Henry cried in wrath, leaving the cooking to come andcount the dogs.

“You’re right, Bill,” he concluded. “Fatty’sgone.”

“An’ he went like greased lightnin’ once he got started.Couldn’t ’ve seen ’m for smoke.”

“No chance at all,” Henry concluded. “They jes’swallowed ’m alive. I bet he was yelpin’ as he went down theirthroats, damn ’em!”

“He always was a fool dog,” said Bill.

“But no fool dog ought to be fool enough to go off an’ commitsuicide that way.” He looked over the remainder of the team with aspeculative eye that summed up instantly the salient traits of each animal.“I bet none of the others would do it.”

“Couldn’t drive ’em away from the fire with a club,”Bill agreed. “I always did think there was somethin’ wrong withFatty anyway.”

And this was the epitaph of a dead dog on the Northland trail—less scantthan the epitaph of many another dog, of many a man.

CHAPTER II
THE SHE-WOLF

Breakfast eaten and the slim camp-outfit lashed to the sled, the men turnedtheir backs on the cheery fire and launched out into the darkness. At oncebegan to rise the cries that were fiercely sad—cries that called throughthe darkness and cold to one another and answered back. Conversation ceased.Daylight came at nine o’clock. At midday the sky to the south warmed torose-colour, and marked where the bulge of the earth intervened between themeridian sun and the northern world. But the rose-colour swiftly faded. Thegrey light of day that remained lasted until three o’clock, when it, too,faded, and the pall of the Arctic night descended upon the lone and silentland.

As darkness came on, the hunting-cries to right and left and rear drewcloser—so close that more than once they sent surges of fear through thetoiling dogs, throwing them into short-lived panics.

At the conclusion of one such panic, when he and Henry had got the dogs back inthe traces, Bill said:

“I wisht they’d strike game somewheres, an’ go away an’leave us alone.”

“They do get on the nerves horrible,” Henry sympathised.

They spoke no more until camp was made.

Henry was bending over and adding ice to the babbling pot of beans when he wasstartled by the sound of a blow, an exclamation from Bill, and a sharp snarlingcry of pain from among the dogs. He straightened up in time to see a dim formdisappearing across the snow into the shelter of the dark. Then he saw Bill,standing amid the dogs, half triumphant, half crestfallen, in one hand a stoutclub, in the other the tail and part of the body of a sun-cured salmon.

“It got half of it,” he announced; “but I got a whack at itjes’ the same. D’ye hear it squeal?”

“What’d it look like?” Henry asked.

“Couldn’t see. But it had four legs an’ a mouth an’hair an’ looked like any dog.”

“Must be a tame wolf, I reckon.”

“It’s damned tame, whatever it is, comin’ in here atfeedin’ time an’ gettin’ its whack of fish.”

That night, when supper was finished and they sat on the oblong box and pulledat their pipes, the circle of gleaming eyes drew in even closer than before.

“I wisht they’d spring up a bunch of moose or something, an’go away an’ leave us alone,” Bill said.

Henry grunted with an intonation that was not all sympathy, and for a quarterof an hour they sat on in silence, Henry staring at the fire, and Bill at thecircle of eyes that burned in the darkness just beyond the firelight.

“I wisht we was pullin’ into McGurry right now,” he beganagain.

“Shut up your wishin’ and your croakin’,” Henry burstout angrily. “Your stomach’s sour. That’s what’sailin’ you. Swallow a spoonful of sody, an’ you’ll sweeten upwonderful an’ be more pleasant company.”

In the morning Henry was aroused by fervid blasphemy that proceeded from themouth of Bill. Henry propped himself up on an elbow and looked to see hiscomrade standing among the dogs beside the replenished fire, his arms raised inobjurgation, his face distorted with passion.

“Hello!” Henry called. “What’s up now?”

“Frog’s gone,” came the answer.

“No.”

“I tell you yes.”

Henry leaped out of the blankets and to the dogs. He counted them with care,and then joined his partner in cursing the power of the Wild that had robbedthem of another dog.

“Frog was the strongest dog of the bunch,” Bill pronounced finally.

“An’ he was no fool dog neither,” Henry added.

And so was recorded the second epitaph in two days.

A gloomy breakfast was eaten, and the four remaining dogs were harnessed to thesled. The day was a repetition of the days that had gone before. The men toiledwithout speech across the face of the frozen world. The silence was unbrokensave by the cries of their pursuers, that, unseen, hung upon their rear. Withthe coming of night in the mid-afternoon, the cries sounded closer as thepursuers drew in according to their custom; and the dogs grew excited andfrightened, and were guilty of panics that tangled the traces and furtherdepressed the two men.

“There, that’ll fix you fool critters,” Bill said withsatisfaction that night, standing erect at completion of his task.

Henry left the cooking to come and see. Not only had his partner tied the dogsup, but he had tied them, after the Indian fashion, with sticks. About the neckof each dog he had fastened a leather thong. To this, and so close to the neckthat the dog could not get his teeth to it, he had tied a stout stick four orfive feet in length. The other end of the stick, in turn, was made fast to astake in the ground by means of a leather thong. The dog was unable to gnawthrough the leather at his own end of the stick. The stick prevented him fromgetting at the leather that fastened the other end.

Henry nodded his head approvingly.

“It’s the only contraption that’ll ever hold One Ear,”he said. “He can gnaw through leather as clean as a knife an’jes’ about half as quick. They all’ll be here in the mornin’hunkydory.”

“You jes’ bet they will,” Bill affirmed. “If one ofem’ turns up missin’, I’ll go without my coffee.”

“They jes’ know we ain’t loaded to kill,” Henryremarked at bed-time, indicating the gleaming circle that hemmed them in.“If we could put a couple of shots into ’em, they’d be morerespectful. They come closer every night. Get the firelight out of your eyesan’ look hard—there! Did you see that one?”

For some time the two men amused themselves with watching the movement of vagueforms on the edge of the firelight. By looking closely and steadily at where apair of eyes burned in the darkness, the form of the animal would slowly takeshape. They could even see these forms move at times.

A sound among the dogs attracted the men’s attention. One Ear wasuttering quick, eager whines, lunging at the length of his stick toward thedarkness, and desisting now and again in order to make frantic attacks on thestick with his teeth.

“Look at that, Bill,” Henry whispered.

Full into the firelight, with a stealthy, sidelong movement, glided a doglikeanimal. It moved with commingled mistrust and daring, cautiously observing themen, its attention fixed on the dogs. One Ear strained the full length of thestick toward the intruder and whined with eagerness.

“That fool One Ear don’t seem scairt much,” Bill said in alow tone.

“It’s a she-wolf,” Henry whispered back, “an’that accounts for Fatty an’ Frog. She’s the decoy for the pack. Shedraws out the dog an’ then all the rest pitches in an’ eats’m up.”

The fire crackled. A log fell apart with a loud spluttering noise. At the soundof it the strange animal leaped back into the darkness.

“Henry, I’m a-thinkin’,” Bill announced.

“Thinkin’ what?”

“I’m a-thinkin’ that was the one I lambasted with theclub.”

“Ain’t the slightest doubt in the world,” was Henry’sresponse.

“An’ right here I want to remark,” Bill went on, “thatthat animal’s familyarity with campfires is suspicious an’immoral.”

“It knows for certain more’n a self-respectin’ wolf ought toknow,” Henry agreed. “A wolf that knows enough to come in with thedogs at feedin’ time has had experiences.”

“Ol’ Villan had a dog once that run away with the wolves,”Bill cogitates aloud. “I ought to know. I shot it out of the pack in amoose pasture over ‘on Little Stick. An’ Ol’ Villan criedlike a baby. Hadn’t seen it for three years, he said. Ben with the wolvesall that time.”

“I reckon you’ve called the turn, Bill. That wolf’s a dog,an’ it’s eaten fish many’s the time from the hand ofman.”

“An if I get a chance at it, that wolf that’s a dog’ll bejes’ meat,” Bill declared. “We can’t afford to lose nomore animals.”

“But you’ve only got three cartridges,” Henry objected.

“I’ll wait for a dead sure shot,” was the reply.

In the morning Henry renewed the fire and cooked breakfast to the accompanimentof his partner’s snoring.

“You was sleepin’ jes’ too comfortable for anything,”Henry told him, as he routed him out for breakfast. “I hadn’t theheart to rouse you.”

Bill began to eat sleepily. He noticed that his cup was empty and started toreach for the pot. But the pot was beyond arm’s length and beside Henry.

“Say, Henry,” he chided gently, “ain’t you forgotsomethin’?”

Henry looked about with great carefulness and shook his head. Bill held up theempty cup.

“You don’t get no coffee,” Henry announced.

“Ain’t run out?” Bill asked anxiously.

“Nope.”

“Ain’t thinkin’ it’ll hurt my digestion?”

“Nope.”

A flush of angry blood pervaded Bill’s face.

“Then it’s jes’ warm an’ anxious I am to behearin’ you explain yourself,” he said.

“Spanker’s gone,” Henry answered.

Without haste, with the air of one resigned to misfortune Bill turned his head,and from where he sat counted the dogs.

“How’d it happen?” he asked apathetically.

Henry shrugged his shoulders. “Don’t know. Unless One Ear gnawed’m loose. He couldn’t a-done it himself, that’s sure.”

“The darned cuss.” Bill spoke gravely and slowly, with no hint ofthe anger that was raging within. “Jes’ because he couldn’tchew himself loose, he chews Spanker loose.”

“Well, Spanker’s troubles is over anyway; I guess he’sdigested by this time an’ cavortin’ over the landscape in thebellies of twenty different wolves,” was Henry’s epitaph on this,the latest lost dog. “Have some coffee, Bill.”

But Bill shook his head.

“Go on,” Henry pleaded, elevating the pot.

Bill shoved his cup aside. “I’ll be ding-dong-danged if I do. Isaid I wouldn’t if ary dog turned up missin’, an’ Iwon’t.”

“It’s darn good coffee,” Henry said enticingly.

But Bill was stubborn, and he ate a dry breakfast washed down with mumbledcurses at One Ear for the trick he had played.

“I’ll tie ’em up out of reach of each other to-night,”Bill said, as they took the trail.

They had travelled little more than a hundred yards, when Henry, who was infront, bent down and picked up something with which his snowshoe had collided.It was dark, and he could not see it, but he recognised it by the touch. Heflung it back, so that it struck the sled and bounced along until it fetched upon Bill’s snowshoes.

“Mebbe you’ll need that in your business,” Henry said.

Bill uttered an exclamation. It was all that was left of Spanker—thestick with which he had been tied.

“They ate ’m hide an’ all,” Bill announced. “Thestick’s as clean as a whistle. They’ve ate the leather offen bothends. They’re damn hungry, Henry, an’ they’ll have youan’ me guessin’ before this trip’s over.”

Henry laughed defiantly. “I ain’t been trailed this way by wolvesbefore, but I’ve gone through a whole lot worse an’ kept my health.Takes more’n a handful of them pesky critters to do for yours truly,Bill, my son.”

“I don’t know, I don’t know,” Bill muttered ominously.

“Well, you’ll know all right when we pull into McGurry.”

“I ain’t feelin’ special enthusiastic,” Bill persisted.

“You’re off colour, that’s what’s the matter withyou,” Henry dogmatised. “What you need is quinine, an’I’m goin’ to dose you up stiff as soon as we make McGurry.”

Bill grunted his disagreement with the diagnosis, and lapsed into silence. Theday was like all the days. Light came at nine o’clock. At twelveo’clock the southern horizon was warmed by the unseen sun; and then beganthe cold grey of afternoon that would merge, three hours later, into night.

It was just after the sun’s futile effort to appear, that Bill slippedthe rifle from under the sled-lashings and said:

“You keep right on, Henry, I’m goin’ to see what I cansee.”

“You’d better stick by the sled,” his partner protested.“You’ve only got three cartridges, an’ there’s notellin’ what might happen.”

“Who’s croaking now?” Bill demanded triumphantly.

Henry made no reply, and plodded on alone, though often he cast anxious glancesback into the grey solitude where his partner had disappeared. An hour later,taking advantage of the cut-offs around which the sled had to go, Bill arrived.

“They’re scattered an’ rangin’ along wide,” hesaid: “keeping up with us an’ lookin’ for game at the sametime. You see, they’re sure of us, only they know they’ve got towait to get us. In the meantime they’re willin’ to pick up anythingeatable that comes handy.”

“You mean they think they’re sure of us,” Henryobjected pointedly.

But Bill ignored him. “I seen some of them. They’re pretty thin.They ain’t had a bite in weeks I reckon, outside of Fatty an’ Frogan’ Spanker; an’ there’s so many of ’em that thatdidn’t go far. They’re remarkable thin. Their ribs is likewash-boards, an’ their stomachs is right up against their backbones.They’re pretty desperate, I can tell you. They’ll be goin’mad, yet, an’ then watch out.”

A few minutes later, Henry, who was now travelling behind the sled, emitted alow, warning whistle. Bill turned and looked, then quietly stopped the dogs. Tothe rear, from around the last bend and plainly into view, on the very trailthey had just covered, trotted a furry, slinking form. Its nose was to thetrail, and it trotted with a peculiar, sliding, effortless gait. When theyhalted, it halted, throwing up its head and regarding them steadily withnostrils that twitched as it caught and studied the scent of them.

“It’s the she-wolf,” Bill answered.

The dogs had lain down in the snow, and he walked past them to join his partnerin the sled. Together they watched the strange animal that had pursued them fordays and that had already accomplished the destruction of half their dog-team.

After a searching scrutiny, the animal trotted forward a few steps. This itrepeated several times, till it was a short hundred yards away. It paused, headup, close by a clump of spruce trees, and with sight and scent studied theoutfit of the watching men. It looked at them in a strangely wistful way, afterthe manner of a dog; but in its wistfulness there was none of the dogaffection. It was a wistfulness bred of hunger, as cruel as its own fangs, asmerciless as the frost itself.

It was large for a wolf, its gaunt frame advertising the lines of an animalthat was among the largest of its kind.

“Stands pretty close to two feet an’ a half at theshoulders,” Henry commented. “An’ I’ll bet itain’t far from five feet long.”

“Kind of strange colour for a wolf,” was Bill’s criticism.“I never seen a red wolf before. Looks almost cinnamon to me.”

The animal was certainly not cinnamon-coloured. Its coat was the truewolf-coat. The dominant colour was grey, and yet there was to it a faintreddish hue—a hue that was baffling, that appeared and disappeared, thatwas more like an illusion of the vision, now grey, distinctly grey, and againgiving hints and glints of a vague redness of colour not classifiable in termsof ordinary experience.

“Looks for all the world like a big husky sled-dog,” Bill said.“I wouldn’t be s’prised to see it wag its tail.”

“Hello, you husky!” he called. “Come here, youwhatever-your-name-is.”

“Ain’t a bit scairt of you,” Henry laughed.

Bill waved his hand at it threateningly and shouted loudly; but the animalbetrayed no fear. The only change in it that they could notice was an accessionof alertness. It still regarded them with the merciless wistfulness of hunger.They were meat, and it was hungry; and it would like to go in and eat them ifit dared.

“Look here, Henry,” Bill said, unconsciously lowering his voice toa whisper because of what he imitated. “We’ve got three cartridges.But it’s a dead shot. Couldn’t miss it. It’s got away withthree of our dogs, an’ we oughter put a stop to it. What d’yesay?”

Henry nodded his consent. Bill cautiously slipped the gun from under thesled-lashing. The gun was on the way to his shoulder, but it never got there.For in that instant the she-wolf leaped sidewise from the trail into the clumpof spruce trees and disappeared.

The two men looked at each other. Henry whistled long and comprehendingly.

“I might have knowed it,” Bill chided himself aloud as he replacedthe gun. “Of course a wolf that knows enough to come in with the dogs atfeedin’ time, ’d know all about shooting-irons. I tell you rightnow, Henry, that critter’s the cause of all our trouble. We’d havesix dogs at the present time, ’stead of three, if it wasn’t forher. An’ I tell you right now, Henry, I’m goin’ to get her.She’s too smart to be shot in the open. But I’m goin’ to layfor her. I’ll bushwhack her as sure as my name is Bill.”

“You needn’t stray off too far in doin’ it,” hispartner admonished. “If that pack ever starts to jump you, them threecartridges’d be wuth no more’n three whoops in hell. Them animalsis damn hungry, an’ once they start in, they’ll sure get you,Bill.”

They camped early that night. Three dogs could not drag the sled so fast norfor so long hours as could six, and they were showing unmistakable signs ofplaying out. And the men went early to bed, Bill first seeing to it that thedogs were tied out of gnawing-reach of one another.

But the wolves were growing bolder, and the men were aroused more than oncefrom their sleep. So near did the wolves approach, that the dogs became franticwith terror, and it was necessary to replenish the fire from time to time inorder to keep the adventurous marauders at safer distance.

“I’ve hearn sailors talk of sharks followin’ a ship,”Bill remarked, as he crawled back into the blankets after one such replenishingof the fire. “Well, them wolves is land sharks. They know their businessbetter’n we do, an’ they ain’t a-holdin’ our trail thisway for their health. They’re goin’ to get us. They’re suregoin’ to get us, Henry.”

“They’ve half got you a’ready, a-talkin’ likethat,” Henry retorted sharply. “A man’s half licked when hesays he is. An’ you’re half eaten from the way you’regoin’ on about it.”

“They’ve got away with better men than you an’ me,”Bill answered.

“Oh, shet up your croakin’. You make me all-fired tired.”

Henry rolled over angrily on his side, but was surprised that Bill made nosimilar display of temper. This was not Bill’s way, for he was easilyangered by sharp words. Henry thought long over it before he went to sleep, andas his eyelids fluttered down and he dozed off, the thought in his mind was:“There’s no mistakin’ it, Bill’s almighty blue.I’ll have to cheer him up to-morrow.”

CHAPTER III
THE HUNGER CRY

The day began auspiciously. They had lost no dogs during the night, and theyswung out upon the trail and into the silence, the darkness, and the cold withspirits that were fairly light. Bill seemed to have forgotten his forebodingsof the previous night, and even waxed facetious with the dogs when, at midday,they overturned the sled on a bad piece of trail.

It was an awkward mix-up. The sled was upside down and jammed between atree-trunk and a huge rock, and they were forced to unharness the dogs in orderto straighten out the tangle. The two men were bent over the sled and trying toright it, when Henry observed One Ear sidling away.

“Here, you, One Ear!” he cried, straightening up and turning aroundon the dog.

But One Ear broke into a run across the snow, his traces trailing behind him.And there, out in the snow of their back track, was the she-wolf waiting forhim. As he neared her, he became suddenly cautious. He slowed down to an alertand mincing walk and then stopped. He regarded her carefully and dubiously, yetdesirefully. She seemed to smile at him, showing her teeth in an ingratiatingrather than a menacing way. She moved toward him a few steps, playfully, andthen halted. One Ear drew near to her, still alert and cautious, his tail andears in the air, his head held high.

He tried to sniff noses with her, but she retreated playfully and coyly. Everyadvance on his part was accompanied by a corresponding retreat on her part.Step by step she was luring him away from the security of his humancompanionship. Once, as though a warning had in vague ways flitted through hisintelligence, he turned his head and looked back at the overturned sled, at histeam-mates, and at the two men who were calling to him.

But whatever idea was forming in his mind, was dissipated by the she-wolf, whoadvanced upon him, sniffed noses with him for a fleeting instant, and thenresumed her coy retreat before his renewed advances.

In the meantime, Bill had bethought himself of the rifle. But it was jammedbeneath the overturned sled, and by the time Henry had helped him to right theload, One Ear and the she-wolf were too close together and the distance toogreat to risk a shot.

Too late One Ear learned his mistake. Before they saw the cause, the two mensaw him turn and start to run back toward them. Then, approaching at rightangles to the trail and cutting off his retreat they saw a dozen wolves, leanand grey, bounding across the snow. On the instant, the she-wolf’scoyness and playfulness disappeared. With a snarl she sprang upon One Ear. Hethrust her off with his shoulder, and, his retreat cut off and still intent onregaining the sled, he altered his course in an attempt to circle around to it.More wolves were appearing every moment and joining in the chase. The she-wolfwas one leap behind One Ear and holding her own.

“Where are you goin’?” Henry suddenly demanded, laying hishand on his partner’s arm.

Bill shook it off. “I won’t stand it,” he said. “Theyain’t a-goin’ to get any more of our dogs if I can help it.”

Gun in hand, he plunged into the underbrush that lined the side of the trail.His intention was apparent enough. Taking the sled as the centre of the circlethat One Ear was making, Bill planned to tap that circle at a point in advanceof the pursuit. With his rifle, in the broad daylight, it might be possible forhim to awe the wolves and save the dog.

“Say, Bill!” Henry called after him. “Be careful! Don’ttake no chances!”

Henry sat down on the sled and watched. There was nothing else for him to do.Bill had already gone from sight; but now and again, appearing and disappearingamongst the underbrush and the scattered clumps of spruce, could be seen OneEar. Henry judged his case to be hopeless. The dog was thoroughly alive to itsdanger, but it was running on the outer circle while the wolf-pack was runningon the inner and shorter circle. It was vain to think of One Ear sooutdistancing his pursuers as to be able to cut across their circle in advanceof them and to regain the sled.

The different lines were rapidly approaching a point. Somewhere out there inthe snow, screened from his sight by trees and thickets, Henry knew that thewolf-pack, One Ear, and Bill were coming together. All too quickly, far morequickly than he had expected, it happened. He heard a shot, then two shots, inrapid succession, and he knew that Bill’s ammunition was gone. Then heheard a great outcry of snarls and yelps. He recognised One Ear’s yell ofpain and terror, and he heard a wolf-cry that bespoke a stricken animal. Andthat was all. The snarls ceased. The yelping died away. Silence settled downagain over the lonely land.

He sat for a long while upon the sled. There was no need for him to go and seewhat had happened. He knew it as though it had taken place before his eyes.Once, he roused with a start and hastily got the axe out from underneath thelashings. But for some time longer he sat and brooded, the two remaining dogscrouching and trembling at his feet.

At last he arose in a weary manner, as though all the resilience had gone outof his body, and proceeded to fasten the dogs to the sled. He passed a ropeover his shoulder, a man-trace, and pulled with the dogs. He did not go far. Atthe first hint of darkness he hastened to make a camp, and he saw to it that hehad a generous supply of firewood. He fed the dogs, cooked and ate his supper,and made his bed close to the fire.

But he was not destined to enjoy that bed. Before his eyes closed the wolveshad drawn too near for safety. It no longer required an effort of the vision tosee them. They were all about him and the fire, in a narrow circle, and hecould see them plainly in the firelight lying down, sitting up, crawlingforward on their bellies, or slinking back and forth. They even slept. Here andthere he could see one curled up in the snow like a dog, taking the sleep thatwas now denied himself.

He kept the fire brightly blazing, for he knew that it alone intervened betweenthe flesh of his body and their hungry fangs. His two dogs stayed close by him,one on either side, leaning against him for protection, crying and whimpering,and at times snarling desperately when a wolf approached a little closer thanusual. At such moments, when his dogs snarled, the whole circle would beagitated, the wolves coming to their feet and pressing tentatively forward, achorus of snarls and eager yelps rising about him. Then the circle would liedown again, and here and there a wolf would resume its broken nap.

But this circle had a continuous tendency to draw in upon him. Bit by bit, aninch at a time, with here a wolf bellying forward, and there a wolf bellyingforward, the circle would narrow until the brutes were almost within springingdistance. Then he would seize brands from the fire and hurl them into the pack.A hasty drawing back always resulted, accompanied by angry yelps and frightenedsnarls when a well-aimed brand struck and scorched a too daring animal.

Morning found the man haggard and worn, wide-eyed from want of sleep. He cookedbreakfast in the darkness, and at nine o’clock, when, with the coming ofdaylight, the wolf-pack drew back, he set about the task he had planned throughthe long hours of the night. Chopping down young saplings, he made themcross-bars of a scaffold by lashing them high up to the trunks of standingtrees. Using the sled-lashing for a heaving rope, and with the aid of the dogs,he hoisted the coffin to the top of the scaffold.

“They got Bill, an’ they may get me, but they’ll sure neverget you, young man,” he said, addressing the dead body in itstree-sepulchre.

Then he took the trail, the lightened sled bounding along behind the willingdogs; for they, too, knew that safety lay open in the gaining of Fort McGurry.The wolves were now more open in their pursuit, trotting sedately behind andranging along on either side, their red tongues lolling out, their lean sidesshowing the undulating ribs with every movement. They were very lean, mereskin-bags stretched over bony frames, with strings for muscles—so leanthat Henry found it in his mind to marvel that they still kept their feet anddid not collapse forthright in the snow.

He did not dare travel until dark. At midday, not only did the sun warm thesouthern horizon, but it even thrust its upper rim, pale and golden, above thesky-line. He received it as a sign. The days were growing longer. The sun wasreturning. But scarcely had the cheer of its light departed, than he went intocamp. There were still several hours of grey daylight and sombre twilight, andhe utilised them in chopping an enormous supply of fire-wood.

With night came horror. Not only were the starving wolves growing bolder, butlack of sleep was telling upon Henry. He dozed despite himself, crouching bythe fire, the blankets about his shoulders, the axe between his knees, and oneither side a dog pressing close against him. He awoke once and saw in front ofhim, not a dozen feet away, a big grey wolf, one of the largest of the pack.And even as he looked, the brute deliberately stretched himself after themanner of a lazy dog, yawning full in his face and looking upon him with apossessive eye, as if, in truth, he were merely a delayed meal that was soon tobe eaten.

This certitude was shown by the whole pack. Fully a score he could count,staring hungrily at him or calmly sleeping in the snow. They reminded him ofchildren gathered about a spread table and awaiting permission to begin to eat.And he was the food they were to eat! He wondered how and when the meal wouldbegin.

As he piled wood on the fire he discovered an appreciation of his own bodywhich he had never felt before. He watched his moving muscles and wasinterested in the cunning mechanism of his fingers. By the light of the fire hecrooked his fingers slowly and repeatedly now one at a time, now all together,spreading them wide or making quick gripping movements. He studied thenail-formation, and prodded the finger-tips, now sharply, and again softly,gauging the while the nerve-sensations produced. It fascinated him, and he grewsuddenly fond of this subtle flesh of his that worked so beautifully andsmoothly and delicately. Then he would cast a glance of fear at the wolf-circledrawn expectantly about him, and like a blow the realisation would strike himthat this wonderful body of his, this living flesh, was no more than so muchmeat, a quest of ravenous animals, to be torn and slashed by their hungryfangs, to be sustenance to them as the moose and the rabbit had often beensustenance to him.

He came out of a doze that was half nightmare, to see the red-hued she-wolfbefore him. She was not more than half a dozen feet away sitting in the snowand wistfully regarding him. The two dogs were whimpering and snarling at hisfeet, but she took no notice of them. She was looking at the man, and for sometime he returned her look. There was nothing threatening about her. She lookedat him merely with a great wistfulness, but he knew it to be the wistfulness ofan equally great hunger. He was the food, and the sight of him excited in herthe gustatory sensations. Her mouth opened, the saliva drooled forth, and shelicked her chops with the pleasure of anticipation.

A spasm of fear went through him. He reached hastily for a brand to throw ather. But even as he reached, and before his fingers had closed on the missile,she sprang back into safety; and he knew that she was used to having thingsthrown at her. She had snarled as she sprang away, baring her white fangs totheir roots, all her wistfulness vanishing, being replaced by a carnivorousmalignity that made him shudder. He glanced at the hand that held the brand,noticing the cunning delicacy of the fingers that gripped it, how they adjustedthemselves to all the inequalities of the surface, curling over and under andabout the rough wood, and one little finger, too close to the burning portionof the brand, sensitively and automatically writhing back from the hurtful heatto a cooler gripping-place; and in the same instant he seemed to see a visionof those same sensitive and delicate fingers being crushed and torn by thewhite teeth of the she-wolf. Never had he been so fond of this body of his asnow when his tenure of it was so precarious.

All night, with burning brands, he fought off the hungry pack. When he dozeddespite himself, the whimpering and snarling of the dogs aroused him. Morningcame, but for the first time the light of day failed to scatter the wolves. Theman waited in vain for them to go. They remained in a circle about him and hisfire, displaying an arrogance of possession that shook his courage born of themorning light.

He made one desperate attempt to pull out on the trail. But the moment he leftthe protection of the fire, the boldest wolf leaped for him, but leaped short.He saved himself by springing back, the jaws snapping together a scant sixinches from his thigh. The rest of the pack was now up and surging upon him,and a throwing of firebrands right and left was necessary to drive them back toa respectful distance.

Even in the daylight he did not dare leave the fire to chop fresh wood. Twentyfeet away towered a huge dead spruce. He spent half the day extending hiscampfire to the tree, at any moment a half dozen burning faggots ready at handto fling at his enemies. Once at the tree, he studied the surrounding forest inorder to fell the tree in the direction of the most firewood.

The night was a repetition of the night before, save that the need for sleepwas becoming overpowering. The snarling of his dogs was losing its efficacy.Besides, they were snarling all the time, and his benumbed and drowsy senses nolonger took note of changing pitch and intensity. He awoke with a start. Theshe-wolf was less than a yard from him. Mechanically, at short range, withoutletting go of it, he thrust a brand full into her open and snarling mouth. Shesprang away, yelling with pain, and while he took delight in the smell ofburning flesh and hair, he watched her shaking her head and growling wrathfullya score of feet away.

But this time, before he dozed again, he tied a burning pine-knot to his righthand. His eyes were closed but few minutes when the burn of the flame on hisflesh awakened him. For several hours he adhered to this programme. Every timehe was thus awakened he drove back the wolves with flying brands, replenishedthe fire, and rearranged the pine-knot on his hand. All worked well, but therecame a time when he fastened the pine-knot insecurely. As his eyes closed itfell away from his hand.

He dreamed. It seemed to him that he was in Fort McGurry. It was warm andcomfortable, and he was playing cribbage with the Factor. Also, it seemed tohim that the fort was besieged by wolves. They were howling at the very gates,and sometimes he and the Factor paused from the game to listen and laugh at thefutile efforts of the wolves to get in. And then, so strange was the dream,there was a crash. The door was burst open. He could see the wolves floodinginto the big living-room of the fort. They were leaping straight for him andthe Factor. With the bursting open of the door, the noise of their howling hadincreased tremendously. This howling now bothered him. His dream was merginginto something else—he knew not what; but through it all, following him,persisted the howling.

And then he awoke to find the howling real. There was a great snarling andyelping. The wolves were rushing him. They were all about him and upon him. Theteeth of one had closed upon his arm. Instinctively he leaped into the fire,and as he leaped, he felt the sharp slash of teeth that tore through the fleshof his leg. Then began a fire fight. His stout mittens temporarily protectedhis hands, and he scooped live coals into the air in all directions, until thecampfire took on the semblance of a volcano.

But it could not last long. His face was blistering in the heat, his eyebrowsand lashes were singed off, and the heat was becoming unbearable to his feet.With a flaming brand in each hand, he sprang to the edge of the fire. Thewolves had been driven back. On every side, wherever the live coals had fallen,the snow was sizzling, and every little while a retiring wolf, with wild leapand snort and snarl, announced that one such live coal had been stepped upon.

Flinging his brands at the nearest of his enemies, the man thrust hissmouldering mittens into the snow and stamped about to cool his feet. His twodogs were missing, and he well knew that they had served as a course in theprotracted meal which had begun days before with Fatty, the last course ofwhich would likely be himself in the days to follow.

“You ain’t got me yet!” he cried, savagely shaking his fistat the hungry beasts; and at the sound of his voice the whole circle wasagitated, there was a general snarl, and the she-wolf slid up close to himacross the snow and watched him with hungry wistfulness.

He set to work to carry out a new idea that had come to him. He extended thefire into a large circle. Inside this circle he crouched, his sleeping outfitunder him as a protection against the melting snow. When he had thusdisappeared within his shelter of flame, the whole pack came curiously to therim of the fire to see what had become of him. Hitherto they had been deniedaccess to the fire, and they now settled down in a close-drawn circle, like somany dogs, blinking and yawning and stretching their lean bodies in theunaccustomed warmth. Then the she-wolf sat down, pointed her nose at a star,and began to howl. One by one the wolves joined her, till the whole pack, onhaunches, with noses pointed skyward, was howling its hunger cry.

Dawn came, and daylight. The fire was burning low. The fuel had run out, andthere was need to get more. The man attempted to step out of his circle offlame, but the wolves surged to meet him. Burning brands made them springaside, but they no longer sprang back. In vain he strove to drive them back. Ashe gave up and stumbled inside his circle, a wolf leaped for him, missed, andlanded with all four feet in the coals. It cried out with terror, at the sametime snarling, and scrambled back to cool its paws in the snow.

The man sat down on his blankets in a crouching position. His body leanedforward from the hips. His shoulders, relaxed and drooping, and his head on hisknees advertised that he had given up the struggle. Now and again he raised hishead to note the dying down of the fire. The circle of flame and coals wasbreaking into segments with openings in between. These openings grew in size,the segments diminished.

“I guess you can come an’ get me any time,” he mumbled.“Anyway, I’m goin’ to sleep.”

Once he awakened, and in an opening in the circle, directly in front of him, hesaw the she-wolf gazing at him.

Again he awakened, a little later, though it seemed hours to him. A mysteriouschange had taken place—so mysterious a change that he was shocked widerawake. Something had happened. He could not understand at first. Then hediscovered it. The wolves were gone. Remained only the trampled snow to showhow closely they had pressed him. Sleep was welling up and gripping him again,his head was sinking down upon his knees, when he roused with a sudden start.

There were cries of men, and churn of sleds, the creaking of harnesses, and theeager whimpering of straining dogs. Four sleds pulled in from the river bed tothe camp among the trees. Half a dozen men were about the man who crouched inthe centre of the dying fire. They were shaking and prodding him intoconsciousness. He looked at them like a drunken man and maundered in strange,sleepy speech.

“Red she-wolf. . . . Come in with the dogs at feedin’ time. . . .First she ate the dog-food. . . . Then she ate the dogs. . . . An’ afterthat she ate Bill. . . . ”

“Where’s Lord Alfred?” one of the men bellowed in his ear,shaking him roughly.

He shook his head slowly. “No, she didn’t eat him. . . . He’sroostin’ in a tree at the last camp.”

“Dead?” the man shouted.

“An’ in a box,” Henry answered. He jerked his shoulderpetulantly away from the grip of his questioner. “Say, you lemme alone. .. . I’m jes’ plump tuckered out. . . . Goo’ night,everybody.”

His eyes fluttered and went shut. His chin fell forward on his chest. And evenas they eased him down upon the blankets his snores were rising on the frostyair.

But there was another sound. Far and faint it was, in the remote distance, thecry of the hungry wolf-pack as it took the trail of other meat than the man ithad just missed.

PART II

CHAPTER I
THE BATTLE OF THE FANGS

It was the she-wolf who had first caught the sound of men’s voices andthe whining of the sled-dogs; and it was the she-wolf who was first to springaway from the cornered man in his circle of dying flame. The pack had beenloath to forego the kill it had hunted down, and it lingered for severalminutes, making sure of the sounds, and then it, too, sprang away on the trailmade by the she-wolf.

Running at the forefront of the pack was a large grey wolf—one of itsseveral leaders. It was he who directed the pack’s course on the heels ofthe she-wolf. It was he who snarled warningly at the younger members of thepack or slashed at them with his fangs when they ambitiously tried to pass him.And it was he who increased the pace when he sighted the she-wolf, now trottingslowly across the snow.

She dropped in alongside by him, as though it were her appointed position, andtook the pace of the pack. He did not snarl at her, nor show his teeth, whenany leap of hers chanced to put her in advance of him. On the contrary, heseemed kindly disposed toward her—too kindly to suit her, for he wasprone to run near to her, and when he ran too near it was she who snarled andshowed her teeth. Nor was she above slashing his shoulder sharply on occasion.At such times he betrayed no anger. He merely sprang to the side and ranstiffly ahead for several awkward leaps, in carriage and conduct resembling anabashed country swain.

This was his one trouble in the running of the pack; but she had othertroubles. On her other side ran a gaunt old wolf, grizzled and marked with thescars of many battles. He ran always on her right side. The fact that he hadbut one eye, and that the left eye, might account for this. He, also, wasaddicted to crowding her, to veering toward her till his scarred muzzle touchedher body, or shoulder, or neck. As with the running mate on the left, sherepelled these attentions with her teeth; but when both bestowed theirattentions at the same time she was roughly jostled, being compelled, withquick snaps to either side, to drive both lovers away and at the same time tomaintain her forward leap with the pack and see the way of her feet before her.At such times her running mates flashed their teeth and growled threateninglyacross at each other. They might have fought, but even wooing and its rivalrywaited upon the more pressing hunger-need of the pack.

After each repulse, when the old wolf sheered abruptly away from thesharp-toothed object of his desire, he shouldered against a youngthree-year-old that ran on his blind right side. This young wolf had attainedhis full size; and, considering the weak and famished condition of the pack, hepossessed more than the average vigour and spirit. Nevertheless, he ran withhis head even with the shoulder of his one-eyed elder. When he ventured to runabreast of the older wolf (which was seldom), a snarl and a snap sent him backeven with the shoulder again. Sometimes, however, he dropped cautiously andslowly behind and edged in between the old leader and the she-wolf. This wasdoubly resented, even triply resented. When she snarled her displeasure, theold leader would whirl on the three-year-old. Sometimes she whirled with him.And sometimes the young leader on the left whirled, too.

At such times, confronted by three sets of savage teeth, the young wolf stoppedprecipitately, throwing himself back on his haunches, with fore-legs stiff,mouth menacing, and mane bristling. This confusion in the front of the movingpack always caused confusion in the rear. The wolves behind collided with theyoung wolf and expressed their displeasure by administering sharp nips on hishind-legs and flanks. He was laying up trouble for himself, for lack of foodand short tempers went together; but with the boundless faith of youth hepersisted in repeating the manoeuvre every little while, though it neversucceeded in gaining anything for him but discomfiture.

Had there been food, love-making and fighting would have gone on apace, and thepack-formation would have been broken up. But the situation of the pack wasdesperate. It was lean with long-standing hunger. It ran below its ordinaryspeed. At the rear limped the weak members, the very young and the very old. Atthe front were the strongest. Yet all were more like skeletons than full-bodiedwolves. Nevertheless, with the exception of the ones that limped, the movementsof the animals were effortless and tireless. Their stringy muscles seemedfounts of inexhaustible energy. Behind every steel-like contraction of amuscle, lay another steel-like contraction, and another, and another,apparently without end.

They ran many miles that day. They ran through the night. And the next dayfound them still running. They were running over the surface of a world frozenand dead. No life stirred. They alone moved through the vast inertness. Theyalone were alive, and they sought for other things that were alive in orderthat they might devour them and continue to live.

They crossed low divides and ranged a dozen small streams in a lower-lyingcountry before their quest was rewarded. Then they came upon moose. It was abig bull they first found. Here was meat and life, and it was guarded by nomysterious fires nor flying missiles of flame. Splay hoofs and palmated antlersthey knew, and they flung their customary patience and caution to the wind. Itwas a brief fight and fierce. The big bull was beset on every side. He rippedthem open or split their skulls with shrewdly driven blows of his great hoofs.He crushed them and broke them on his large horns. He stamped them into thesnow under him in the wallowing struggle. But he was foredoomed, and he wentdown with the she-wolf tearing savagely at his throat, and with other teethfixed everywhere upon him, devouring him alive, before ever his last strugglesceased or his last damage had been wrought.

There was food in plenty. The bull weighed over eight hundredpounds—fully twenty pounds of meat per mouth for the forty-odd wolves ofthe pack. But if they could fast prodigiously, they could feed prodigiously,and soon a few scattered bones were all that remained of the splendid livebrute that had faced the pack a few hours before.

There was now much resting and sleeping. With full stomachs, bickering andquarrelling began among the younger males, and this continued through the fewdays that followed before the breaking-up of the pack. The famine was over. Thewolves were now in the country of game, and though they still hunted in pack,they hunted more cautiously, cutting out heavy cows or crippled old bulls fromthe small moose-herds they ran across.

There came a day, in this land of plenty, when the wolf-pack split in half andwent in different directions. The she-wolf, the young leader on her left, andthe one-eyed elder on her right, led their half of the pack down to theMackenzie River and across into the lake country to the east. Each day thisremnant of the pack dwindled. Two by two, male and female, the wolves weredeserting. Occasionally a solitary male was driven out by the sharp teeth ofhis rivals. In the end there remained only four: the she-wolf, the youngleader, the one-eyed one, and the ambitious three-year-old.

The she-wolf had by now developed a ferocious temper. Her three suitors allbore the marks of her teeth. Yet they never replied in kind, never defendedthemselves against her. They turned their shoulders to her most savage slashes,and with wagging tails and mincing steps strove to placate her wrath. But ifthey were all mildness toward her, they were all fierceness toward one another.The three-year-old grew too ambitious in his fierceness. He caught the one-eyedelder on his blind side and ripped his ear into ribbons. Though the grizzledold fellow could see only on one side, against the youth and vigour of theother he brought into play the wisdom of long years of experience. His lost eyeand his scarred muzzle bore evidence to the nature of his experience. He hadsurvived too many battles to be in doubt for a moment about what to do.

The battle began fairly, but it did not end fairly. There was no telling whatthe outcome would have been, for the third wolf joined the elder, and together,old leader and young leader, they attacked the ambitious three-year-old andproceeded to destroy him. He was beset on either side by the merciless fangs ofhis erstwhile comrades. Forgotten were the days they had hunted together, thegame they had pulled down, the famine they had suffered. That business was athing of the past. The business of love was at hand—ever a sterner andcrueller business than that of food-getting.

And in the meanwhile, the she-wolf, the cause of it all, sat down contentedlyon her haunches and watched. She was even pleased. This was her day—andit came not often—when manes bristled, and fang smote fang or ripped andtore the yielding flesh, all for the possession of her.

And in the business of love the three-year-old, who had made this his firstadventure upon it, yielded up his life. On either side of his body stood histwo rivals. They were gazing at the she-wolf, who sat smiling in the snow. Butthe elder leader was wise, very wise, in love even as in battle. The youngerleader turned his head to lick a wound on his shoulder. The curve of his neckwas turned toward his rival. With his one eye the elder saw the opportunity. Hedarted in low and closed with his fangs. It was a long, ripping slash, and deepas well. His teeth, in passing, burst the wall of the great vein of the throat.Then he leaped clear.

The young leader snarled terribly, but his snarl broke midmost into a ticklingcough. Bleeding and coughing, already stricken, he sprang at the elder andfought while life faded from him, his legs going weak beneath him, the light ofday dulling on his eyes, his blows and springs falling shorter and shorter.

And all the while the she-wolf sat on her haunches and smiled. She was madeglad in vague ways by the battle, for this was the love-making of the Wild, thesex-tragedy of the natural world that was tragedy only to those that died. Tothose that survived it was not tragedy, but realisation and achievement.

When the young leader lay in the snow and moved no more, One Eye stalked overto the she-wolf. His carriage was one of mingled triumph and caution. He wasplainly expectant of a rebuff, and he was just as plainly surprised when herteeth did not flash out at him in anger. For the first time she met him with akindly manner. She sniffed noses with him, and even condescended to leap aboutand frisk and play with him in quite puppyish fashion. And he, for all his greyyears and sage experience, behaved quite as puppyishly and even a little morefoolishly.

Forgotten already were the vanquished rivals and the love-tale red-written onthe snow. Forgotten, save once, when old One Eye stopped for a moment to lickhis stiffening wounds. Then it was that his lips half writhed into a snarl, andthe hair of his neck and shoulders involuntarily bristled, while he halfcrouched for a spring, his claws spasmodically clutching into the snow-surfacefor firmer footing. But it was all forgotten the next moment, as he sprangafter the she-wolf, who was coyly leading him a chase through the woods.

After that they ran side by side, like good friends who have come to anunderstanding. The days passed by, and they kept together, hunting their meatand killing and eating it in common. After a time the she-wolf began to growrestless. She seemed to be searching for something that she could not find. Thehollows under fallen trees seemed to attract her, and she spent much timenosing about among the larger snow-piled crevices in the rocks and in the cavesof overhanging banks. Old One Eye was not interested at all, but he followedher good-naturedly in her quest, and when her investigations in particularplaces were unusually protracted, he would lie down and wait until she wasready to go on.

They did not remain in one place, but travelled across country until theyregained the Mackenzie River, down which they slowly went, leaving it often tohunt game along the small streams that entered it, but always returning to itagain. Sometimes they chanced upon other wolves, usually in pairs; but therewas no friendliness of intercourse displayed on either side, no gladness atmeeting, no desire to return to the pack-formation. Several times theyencountered solitary wolves. These were always males, and they were pressinglyinsistent on joining with One Eye and his mate. This he resented, and when shestood shoulder to shoulder with him, bristling and showing her teeth, theaspiring solitary ones would back off, turn-tail, and continue on their lonelyway.

One moonlight night, running through the quiet forest, One Eye suddenly halted.His muzzle went up, his tail stiffened, and his nostrils dilated as he scentedthe air. One foot also he held up, after the manner of a dog. He was notsatisfied, and he continued to smell the air, striving to understand themessage borne upon it to him. One careless sniff had satisfied his mate, andshe trotted on to reassure him. Though he followed her, he was still dubious,and he could not forbear an occasional halt in order more carefully to studythe warning.

She crept out cautiously on the edge of a large open space in the midst of thetrees. For some time she stood alone. Then One Eye, creeping and crawling,every sense on the alert, every hair radiating infinite suspicion, joined her.They stood side by side, watching and listening and smelling.

To their ears came the sounds of dogs wrangling and scuffling, the gutturalcries of men, the sharper voices of scolding women, and once the shrill andplaintive cry of a child. With the exception of the huge bulks of theskin-lodges, little could be seen save the flames of the fire, broken by themovements of intervening bodies, and the smoke rising slowly on the quiet air.But to their nostrils came the myriad smells of an Indian camp, carrying astory that was largely incomprehensible to One Eye, but every detail of whichthe she-wolf knew.

She was strangely stirred, and sniffed and sniffed with an increasing delight.But old One Eye was doubtful. He betrayed his apprehension, and startedtentatively to go. She turned and touched his neck with her muzzle in areassuring way, then regarded the camp again. A new wistfulness was in herface, but it was not the wistfulness of hunger. She was thrilling to a desirethat urged her to go forward, to be in closer to that fire, to be squabblingwith the dogs, and to be avoiding and dodging the stumbling feet of men.

One Eye moved impatiently beside her; her unrest came back upon her, and sheknew again her pressing need to find the thing for which she searched. Sheturned and trotted back into the forest, to the great relief of One Eye, whotrotted a little to the fore until they were well within the shelter of thetrees.

As they slid along, noiseless as shadows, in the moonlight, they came upon arun-way. Both noses went down to the footprints in the snow. These footprintswere very fresh. One Eye ran ahead cautiously, his mate at his heels. The broadpads of their feet were spread wide and in contact with the snow were likevelvet. One Eye caught sight of a dim movement of white in the midst of thewhite. His sliding gait had been deceptively swift, but it was as nothing tothe speed at which he now ran. Before him was bounding the faint patch of whitehe had discovered.

They were running along a narrow alley flanked on either side by a growth ofyoung spruce. Through the trees the mouth of the alley could be seen, openingout on a moonlit glade. Old One Eye was rapidly overhauling the fleeing shapeof white. Bound by bound he gained. Now he was upon it. One leap more and histeeth would be sinking into it. But that leap was never made. High in the air,and straight up, soared the shape of white, now a struggling snowshoe rabbitthat leaped and bounded, executing a fantastic dance there above him in the airand never once returning to earth.

One Eye sprang back with a snort of sudden fright, then shrank down to the snowand crouched, snarling threats at this thing of fear he did not understand. Butthe she-wolf coolly thrust past him. She poised for a moment, then sprang forthe dancing rabbit. She, too, soared high, but not so high as the quarry, andher teeth clipped emptily together with a metallic snap. She made another leap,and another.

Her mate had slowly relaxed from his crouch and was watching her. He nowevinced displeasure at her repeated failures, and himself made a mighty springupward. His teeth closed upon the rabbit, and he bore it back to earth withhim. But at the same time there was a suspicious crackling movement beside him,and his astonished eye saw a young spruce sapling bending down above him tostrike him. His jaws let go their grip, and he leaped backward to escape thisstrange danger, his lips drawn back from his fangs, his throat snarling, everyhair bristling with rage and fright. And in that moment the sapling reared itsslender length upright and the rabbit soared dancing in the air again.

The she-wolf was angry. She sank her fangs into her mate’s shoulder inreproof; and he, frightened, unaware of what constituted this new onslaught,struck back ferociously and in still greater fright, ripping down the side ofthe she-wolf’s muzzle. For him to resent such reproof was equallyunexpected to her, and she sprang upon him in snarling indignation. Then hediscovered his mistake and tried to placate her. But she proceeded to punishhim roundly, until he gave over all attempts at placation, and whirled in acircle, his head away from her, his shoulders receiving the punishment of herteeth.

In the meantime the rabbit danced above them in the air. The she-wolf sat downin the snow, and old One Eye, now more in fear of his mate than of themysterious sapling, again sprang for the rabbit. As he sank back with itbetween his teeth, he kept his eye on the sapling. As before, it followed himback to earth. He crouched down under the impending blow, his hair bristling,but his teeth still keeping tight hold of the rabbit. But the blow did notfall. The sapling remained bent above him. When he moved it moved, and hegrowled at it through his clenched jaws; when he remained still, it remainedstill, and he concluded it was safer to continue remaining still. Yet the warmblood of the rabbit tasted good in his mouth.

It was his mate who relieved him from the quandary in which he found himself.She took the rabbit from him, and while the sapling swayed and teeteredthreateningly above her she calmly gnawed off the rabbit’s head. At oncethe sapling shot up, and after that gave no more trouble, remaining in thedecorous and perpendicular position in which nature had intended it to grow.Then, between them, the she-wolf and One Eye devoured the game which themysterious sapling had caught for them.

There were other run-ways and alleys where rabbits were hanging in the air, andthe wolf-pair prospected them all, the she-wolf leading the way, old One Eyefollowing and observant, learning the method of robbing snares—aknowledge destined to stand him in good stead in the days to come.

CHAPTER II
THE LAIR

For two days the she-wolf and One Eye hung about the Indian camp. He wasworried and apprehensive, yet the camp lured his mate and she was loath todepart. But when, one morning, the air was rent with the report of a rifleclose at hand, and a bullet smashed against a tree trunk several inches fromOne Eye’s head, they hesitated no more, but went off on a long, swinginglope that put quick miles between them and the danger.

They did not go far—a couple of days’ journey. The she-wolf’sneed to find the thing for which she searched had now become imperative. Shewas getting very heavy, and could run but slowly. Once, in the pursuit of arabbit, which she ordinarily would have caught with ease, she gave over and laydown and rested. One Eye came to her; but when he touched her neck gently withhis muzzle she snapped at him with such quick fierceness that he tumbled overbackward and cut a ridiculous figure in his effort to escape her teeth. Hertemper was now shorter than ever; but he had become more patient than ever andmore solicitous.

And then she found the thing for which she sought. It was a few miles up asmall stream that in the summer time flowed into the Mackenzie, but that thenwas frozen over and frozen down to its rocky bottom—a dead stream ofsolid white from source to mouth. The she-wolf was trotting wearily along, hermate well in advance, when she came upon the overhanging, high clay-bank. Sheturned aside and trotted over to it. The wear and tear of spring storms andmelting snows had underwashed the bank and in one place had made a small caveout of a narrow fissure.

She paused at the mouth of the cave and looked the wall over carefully. Then,on one side and the other, she ran along the base of the wall to where itsabrupt bulk merged from the softer-lined landscape. Returning to the cave, sheentered its narrow mouth. For a short three feet she was compelled to crouch,then the walls widened and rose higher in a little round chamber nearly sixfeet in diameter. The roof barely cleared her head. It was dry and cosey. Sheinspected it with painstaking care, while One Eye, who had returned, stood inthe entrance and patiently watched her. She dropped her head, with her nose tothe ground and directed toward a point near to her closely bunched feet, andaround this point she circled several times; then, with a tired sigh that wasalmost a grunt, she curled her body in, relaxed her legs, and dropped down, herhead toward the entrance. One Eye, with pointed, interested ears, laughed ather, and beyond, outlined against the white light, she could see the brush ofhis tail waving good-naturedly. Her own ears, with a snuggling movement, laidtheir sharp points backward and down against the head for a moment, while hermouth opened and her tongue lolled peaceably out, and in this way she expressedthat she was pleased and satisfied.

One Eye was hungry. Though he lay down in the entrance and slept, his sleep wasfitful. He kept awaking and cocking his ears at the bright world without, wherethe April sun was blazing across the snow. When he dozed, upon his ears wouldsteal the faint whispers of hidden trickles of running water, and he wouldrouse and listen intently. The sun had come back, and all the awakeningNorthland world was calling to him. Life was stirring. The feel of spring wasin the air, the feel of growing life under the snow, of sap ascending in thetrees, of buds bursting the shackles of the frost.

He cast anxious glances at his mate, but she showed no desire to get up. Helooked outside, and half a dozen snow-birds fluttered across his field ofvision. He started to get up, then looked back to his mate again, and settleddown and dozed. A shrill and minute singing stole upon his hearing. Once, andtwice, he sleepily brushed his nose with his paw. Then he woke up. There,buzzing in the air at the tip of his nose, was a lone mosquito. It was afull-grown mosquito, one that had lain frozen in a dry log all winter and thathad now been thawed out by the sun. He could resist the call of the world nolonger. Besides, he was hungry.

He crawled over to his mate and tried to persuade her to get up. But she onlysnarled at him, and he walked out alone into the bright sunshine to find thesnow-surface soft under foot and the travelling difficult. He went up thefrozen bed of the stream, where the snow, shaded by the trees, was yet hard andcrystalline. He was gone eight hours, and he came back through the darknesshungrier than when he had started. He had found game, but he had not caught it.He had broken through the melting snow crust, and wallowed, while the snowshoerabbits had skimmed along on top lightly as ever.

He paused at the mouth of the cave with a sudden shock of suspicion. Faint,strange sounds came from within. They were sounds not made by his mate, and yetthey were remotely familiar. He bellied cautiously inside and was met by awarning snarl from the she-wolf. This he received without perturbation, thoughhe obeyed it by keeping his distance; but he remained interested in the othersounds—faint, muffled sobbings and slubberings.

His mate warned him irritably away, and he curled up and slept in the entrance.When morning came and a dim light pervaded the lair, he again sought after thesource of the remotely familiar sounds. There was a new note in hismate’s warning snarl. It was a jealous note, and he was very careful inkeeping a respectful distance. Nevertheless, he made out, sheltering betweenher legs against the length of her body, five strange little bundles of life,very feeble, very helpless, making tiny whimpering noises, with eyes that didnot open to the light. He was surprised. It was not the first time in his longand successful life that this thing had happened. It had happened many times,yet each time it was as fresh a surprise as ever to him.

His mate looked at him anxiously. Every little while she emitted a low growl,and at times, when it seemed to her he approached too near, the growl shot upin her throat to a sharp snarl. Of her own experience she had no memory of thething happening; but in her instinct, which was the experience of all themothers of wolves, there lurked a memory of fathers that had eaten theirnew-born and helpless progeny. It manifested itself as a fear strong withinher, that made her prevent One Eye from more closely inspecting the cubs he hadfathered.

But there was no danger. Old One Eye was feeling the urge of an impulse, thatwas, in turn, an instinct that had come down to him from all the fathers ofwolves. He did not question it, nor puzzle over it. It was there, in the fibreof his being; and it was the most natural thing in the world that he shouldobey it by turning his back on his new-born family and by trotting out and awayon the meat-trail whereby he lived.

Five or six miles from the lair, the stream divided, its forks going off amongthe mountains at a right angle. Here, leading up the left fork, he came upon afresh track. He smelled it and found it so recent that he crouched swiftly, andlooked in the direction in which it disappeared. Then he turned deliberatelyand took the right fork. The footprint was much larger than the one his ownfeet made, and he knew that in the wake of such a trail there was little meatfor him.

Half a mile up the right fork, his quick ears caught the sound of gnawingteeth. He stalked the quarry and found it to be a porcupine, standing uprightagainst a tree and trying his teeth on the bark. One Eye approached carefullybut hopelessly. He knew the breed, though he had never met it so far northbefore; and never in his long life had porcupine served him for a meal. But hehad long since learned that there was such a thing as Chance, or Opportunity,and he continued to draw near. There was never any telling what might happen,for with live things events were somehow always happening differently.

The porcupine rolled itself into a ball, radiating long, sharp needles in alldirections that defied attack. In his youth One Eye had once sniffed too near asimilar, apparently inert ball of quills, and had the tail flick out suddenlyin his face. One quill he had carried away in his muzzle, where it had remainedfor weeks, a rankling flame, until it finally worked out. So he lay down, in acomfortable crouching position, his nose fully a foot away, and out of the lineof the tail. Thus he waited, keeping perfectly quiet. There was no telling.Something might happen. The porcupine might unroll. There might be opportunityfor a deft and ripping thrust of paw into the tender, unguarded belly.

But at the end of half an hour he arose, growled wrathfully at the motionlessball, and trotted on. He had waited too often and futilely in the past forporcupines to unroll, to waste any more time. He continued up the right fork.The day wore along, and nothing rewarded his hunt.

The urge of his awakened instinct of fatherhood was strong upon him. He mustfind meat. In the afternoon he blundered upon a ptarmigan. He came out of athicket and found himself face to face with the slow-witted bird. It wassitting on a log, not a foot beyond the end of his nose. Each saw the other.The bird made a startled rise, but he struck it with his paw, and smashed itdown to earth, then pounced upon it, and caught it in his teeth as it scuttledacross the snow trying to rise in the air again. As his teeth crunched throughthe tender flesh and fragile bones, he began naturally to eat. Then heremembered, and, turning on the back-track, started for home, carrying theptarmigan in his mouth.

A mile above the forks, running velvet-footed as was his custom, a glidingshadow that cautiously prospected each new vista of the trail, he came uponlater imprints of the large tracks he had discovered in the early morning. Asthe track led his way, he followed, prepared to meet the maker of it at everyturn of the stream.

He slid his head around a corner of rock, where began an unusually large bendin the stream, and his quick eyes made out something that sent him crouchingswiftly down. It was the maker of the track, a large female lynx. She wascrouching as he had crouched once that day, in front of her the tight-rolledball of quills. If he had been a gliding shadow before, he now became the ghostof such a shadow, as he crept and circled around, and came up well to leewardof the silent, motionless pair.

He lay down in the snow, depositing the ptarmigan beside him, and with eyespeering through the needles of a low-growing spruce he watched the play of lifebefore him—the waiting lynx and the waiting porcupine, each intent onlife; and, such was the curiousness of the game, the way of life for one lay inthe eating of the other, and the way of life for the other lay in being noteaten. While old One Eye, the wolf crouching in the covert, played his part,too, in the game, waiting for some strange freak of Chance, that might help himon the meat-trail which was his way of life.

Half an hour passed, an hour; and nothing happened. The ball of quills mighthave been a stone for all it moved; the lynx might have been frozen to marble;and old One Eye might have been dead. Yet all three animals were keyed to atenseness of living that was almost painful, and scarcely ever would it come tothem to be more alive than they were then in their seeming petrifaction.

One Eye moved slightly and peered forth with increased eagerness. Something washappening. The porcupine had at last decided that its enemy had gone away.Slowly, cautiously, it was unrolling its ball of impregnable armour. It wasagitated by no tremor of anticipation. Slowly, slowly, the bristling ballstraightened out and lengthened. One Eye watching, felt a sudden moistness inhis mouth and a drooling of saliva, involuntary, excited by the living meatthat was spreading itself like a repast before him.

Not quite entirely had the porcupine unrolled when it discovered its enemy. Inthat instant the lynx struck. The blow was like a flash of light. The paw, withrigid claws curving like talons, shot under the tender belly and came back witha swift ripping movement. Had the porcupine been entirely unrolled, or had itnot discovered its enemy a fraction of a second before the blow was struck, thepaw would have escaped unscathed; but a side-flick of the tail sank sharpquills into it as it was withdrawn.

Everything had happened at once—the blow, the counter-blow, the squeal ofagony from the porcupine, the big cat’s squall of sudden hurt andastonishment. One Eye half arose in his excitement, his ears up, his tailstraight out and quivering behind him. The lynx’s bad temper got the bestof her. She sprang savagely at the thing that had hurt her. But the porcupine,squealing and grunting, with disrupted anatomy trying feebly to roll up intoits ball-protection, flicked out its tail again, and again the big cat squalledwith hurt and astonishment. Then she fell to backing away and sneezing, hernose bristling with quills like a monstrous pin-cushion. She brushed her nosewith her paws, trying to dislodge the fiery darts, thrust it into the snow, andrubbed it against twigs and branches, and all the time leaping about, ahead,sidewise, up and down, in a frenzy of pain and fright.

She sneezed continually, and her stub of a tail was doing its best towardlashing about by giving quick, violent jerks. She quit her antics, and quieteddown for a long minute. One Eye watched. And even he could not repress a startand an involuntary bristling of hair along his back when she suddenly leaped,without warning, straight up in the air, at the same time emitting a long andmost terrible squall. Then she sprang away, up the trail, squalling with everyleap she made.

It was not until her racket had faded away in the distance and died out thatOne Eye ventured forth. He walked as delicately as though all the snow werecarpeted with porcupine quills, erect and ready to pierce the soft pads of hisfeet. The porcupine met his approach with a furious squealing and a clashing ofits long teeth. It had managed to roll up in a ball again, but it was not quitethe old compact ball; its muscles were too much torn for that. It had beenripped almost in half, and was still bleeding profusely.

One Eye scooped out mouthfuls of the blood-soaked snow, and chewed and tastedand swallowed. This served as a relish, and his hunger increased mightily; buthe was too old in the world to forget his caution. He waited. He lay down andwaited, while the porcupine grated its teeth and uttered grunts and sobs andoccasional sharp little squeals. In a little while, One Eye noticed that thequills were drooping and that a great quivering had set up. The quivering cameto an end suddenly. There was a final defiant clash of the long teeth. Then allthe quills drooped quite down, and the body relaxed and moved no more.

With a nervous, shrinking paw, One Eye stretched out the porcupine to its fulllength and turned it over on its back. Nothing had happened. It was surelydead. He studied it intently for a moment, then took a careful grip with histeeth and started off down the stream, partly carrying, partly dragging theporcupine, with head turned to the side so as to avoid stepping on the pricklymass. He recollected something, dropped the burden, and trotted back to wherehe had left the ptarmigan. He did not hesitate a moment. He knew clearly whatwas to be done, and this he did by promptly eating the ptarmigan. Then hereturned and took up his burden.

When he dragged the result of his day’s hunt into the cave, the she-wolfinspected it, turned her muzzle to him, and lightly licked him on the neck. Butthe next instant she was warning him away from the cubs with a snarl that wasless harsh than usual and that was more apologetic than menacing. Herinstinctive fear of the father of her progeny was toning down. He was behavingas a wolf-father should, and manifesting no unholy desire to devour the younglives she had brought into the world.

CHAPTER III
THE GREY CUB

He was different from his brothers and sisters. Their hair already betrayed thereddish hue inherited from their mother, the she-wolf; while he alone, in thisparticular, took after his father. He was the one little grey cub of thelitter. He had bred true to the straight wolf-stock—in fact, he had bredtrue to old One Eye himself, physically, with but a single exception, and thatwas he had two eyes to his father’s one.

The grey cub’s eyes had not been open long, yet already he could see withsteady clearness. And while his eyes were still closed, he had felt, tasted,and smelled. He knew his two brothers and his two sisters very well. He hadbegun to romp with them in a feeble, awkward way, and even to squabble, hislittle throat vibrating with a queer rasping noise (the forerunner of thegrowl), as he worked himself into a passion. And long before his eyes hadopened he had learned by touch, taste, and smell to know his mother—afount of warmth and liquid food and tenderness. She possessed a gentle,caressing tongue that soothed him when it passed over his soft little body, andthat impelled him to snuggle close against her and to doze off to sleep.

Most of the first month of his life had been passed thus in sleeping; but nowhe could see quite well, and he stayed awake for longer periods of time, and hewas coming to learn his world quite well. His world was gloomy; but he did notknow that, for he knew no other world. It was dim-lighted; but his eyes hadnever had to adjust themselves to any other light. His world was very small.Its limits were the walls of the lair; but as he had no knowledge of the wideworld outside, he was never oppressed by the narrow confines of his existence.

But he had early discovered that one wall of his world was different from therest. This was the mouth of the cave and the source of light. He had discoveredthat it was different from the other walls long before he had any thoughts ofhis own, any conscious volitions. It had been an irresistible attraction beforeever his eyes opened and looked upon it. The light from it had beat upon hissealed lids, and the eyes and the optic nerves had pulsated to little,sparklike flashes, warm-coloured and strangely pleasing. The life of his body,and of every fibre of his body, the life that was the very substance of hisbody and that was apart from his own personal life, had yearned toward thislight and urged his body toward it in the same way that the cunning chemistryof a plant urges it toward the sun.

Always, in the beginning, before his conscious life dawned, he had crawledtoward the mouth of the cave. And in this his brothers and sisters were onewith him. Never, in that period, did any of them crawl toward the dark cornersof the back-wall. The light drew them as if they were plants; the chemistry ofthe life that composed them demanded the light as a necessity of being; andtheir little puppet-bodies crawled blindly and chemically, like the tendrils ofa vine. Later on, when each developed individuality and became personallyconscious of impulsions and desires, the attraction of the light increased.They were always crawling and sprawling toward it, and being driven back fromit by their mother.

It was in this way that the grey cub learned other attributes of his motherthan the soft, soothing, tongue. In his insistent crawling toward the light, hediscovered in her a nose that with a sharp nudge administered rebuke, andlater, a paw, that crushed him down and rolled him over and over with swift,calculating stroke. Thus he learned hurt; and on top of it he learned to avoidhurt, first, by not incurring the risk of it; and second, when he had incurredthe risk, by dodging and by retreating. These were conscious actions, and werethe results of his first generalisations upon the world. Before that he hadrecoiled automatically from hurt, as he had crawled automatically toward thelight. After that he recoiled from hurt because he knew that it washurt.

He was a fierce little cub. So were his brothers and sisters. It was to beexpected. He was a carnivorous animal. He came of a breed of meat-killers andmeat-eaters. His father and mother lived wholly upon meat. The milk he hadsucked with his first flickering life, was milk transformed directly from meat,and now, at a month old, when his eyes had been open for but a week, he wasbeginning himself to eat meat—meat half-digested by the she-wolf anddisgorged for the five growing cubs that already made too great demand upon herbreast.

But he was, further, the fiercest of the litter. He could make a louder raspinggrowl than any of them. His tiny rages were much more terrible than theirs. Itwas he that first learned the trick of rolling a fellow-cub over with a cunningpaw-stroke. And it was he that first gripped another cub by the ear and pulledand tugged and growled through jaws tight-clenched. And certainly it was hethat caused the mother the most trouble in keeping her litter from the mouth ofthe cave.

The fascination of the light for the grey cub increased from day to day. He wasperpetually departing on yard-long adventures toward the cave’s entrance,and as perpetually being driven back. Only he did not know it for an entrance.He did not know anything about entrances—passages whereby one goes fromone place to another place. He did not know any other place, much less of a wayto get there. So to him the entrance of the cave was a wall—a wall oflight. As the sun was to the outside dweller, this wall was to him the sun ofhis world. It attracted him as a candle attracts a moth. He was always strivingto attain it. The life that was so swiftly expanding within him, urged himcontinually toward the wall of light. The life that was within him knew that itwas the one way out, the way he was predestined to tread. But he himself didnot know anything about it. He did not know there was any outside at all.

There was one strange thing about this wall of light. His father (he hadalready come to recognise his father as the one other dweller in the world, acreature like his mother, who slept near the light and was a bringer ofmeat)—his father had a way of walking right into the white far wall anddisappearing. The grey cub could not understand this. Though never permitted byhis mother to approach that wall, he had approached the other walls, andencountered hard obstruction on the end of his tender nose. This hurt. Andafter several such adventures, he left the walls alone. Without thinking aboutit, he accepted this disappearing into the wall as a peculiarity of his father,as milk and half-digested meat were peculiarities of his mother.

In fact, the grey cub was not given to thinking—at least, to the kind ofthinking customary of men. His brain worked in dim ways. Yet his conclusionswere as sharp and distinct as those achieved by men. He had a method ofaccepting things, without questioning the why and wherefore. In reality, thiswas the act of classification. He was never disturbed over why a thinghappened. How it happened was sufficient for him. Thus, when he had bumped hisnose on the back-wall a few times, he accepted that he would not disappear intowalls. In the same way he accepted that his father could disappear into walls.But he was not in the least disturbed by desire to find out the reason for thedifference between his father and himself. Logic and physics were no part ofhis mental make-up.

Like most creatures of the Wild, he early experienced famine. There came a timewhen not only did the meat-supply cease, but the milk no longer came from hismother’s breast. At first, the cubs whimpered and cried, but for the mostpart they slept. It was not long before they were reduced to a coma of hunger.There were no more spats and squabbles, no more tiny rages nor attempts atgrowling; while the adventures toward the far white wall ceased altogether. Thecubs slept, while the life that was in them flickered and died down.

One Eye was desperate. He ranged far and wide, and slept but little in the lairthat had now become cheerless and miserable. The she-wolf, too, left her litterand went out in search of meat. In the first days after the birth of the cubs,One Eye had journeyed several times back to the Indian camp and robbed therabbit snares; but, with the melting of the snow and the opening of thestreams, the Indian camp had moved away, and that source of supply was closedto him.

When the grey cub came back to life and again took interest in the far whitewall, he found that the population of his world had been reduced. Only onesister remained to him. The rest were gone. As he grew stronger, he foundhimself compelled to play alone, for the sister no longer lifted her head normoved about. His little body rounded out with the meat he now ate; but the foodhad come too late for her. She slept continuously, a tiny skeleton flung roundwith skin in which the flame flickered lower and lower and at last went out.

Then there came a time when the grey cub no longer saw his father appearing anddisappearing in the wall nor lying down asleep in the entrance. This hadhappened at the end of a second and less severe famine. The she-wolf knew whyOne Eye never came back, but there was no way by which she could tell what shehad seen to the grey cub. Hunting herself for meat, up the left fork of thestream where lived the lynx, she had followed a day-old trail of One Eye. Andshe had found him, or what remained of him, at the end of the trail. There weremany signs of the battle that had been fought, and of the lynx’swithdrawal to her lair after having won the victory. Before she went away, theshe-wolf had found this lair, but the signs told her that the lynx was inside,and she had not dared to venture in.

After that, the she-wolf in her hunting avoided the left fork. For she knewthat in the lynx’s lair was a litter of kittens, and she knew the lynxfor a fierce, bad-tempered creature and a terrible fighter. It was all verywell for half a dozen wolves to drive a lynx, spitting and bristling, up atree; but it was quite a different matter for a lone wolf to encounter alynx—especially when the lynx was known to have a litter of hungrykittens at her back.

But the Wild is the Wild, and motherhood is motherhood, at all times fiercelyprotective whether in the Wild or out of it; and the time was to come when theshe-wolf, for her grey cub’s sake, would venture the left fork, and thelair in the rocks, and the lynx’s wrath.

CHAPTER IV
THE WALL OF THE WORLD

By the time his mother began leaving the cave on hunting expeditions, the cubhad learned well the law that forbade his approaching the entrance. Not onlyhad this law been forcibly and many times impressed on him by hismother’s nose and paw, but in him the instinct of fear was developing.Never, in his brief cave-life, had he encountered anything of which to beafraid. Yet fear was in him. It had come down to him from a remote ancestrythrough a thousand thousand lives. It was a heritage he had received directlyfrom One Eye and the she-wolf; but to them, in turn, it had been passed downthrough all the generations of wolves that had gone before. Fear!—thatlegacy of the Wild which no animal may escape nor exchange for pottage.

So the grey cub knew fear, though he knew not the stuff of which fear was made.Possibly he accepted it as one of the restrictions of life. For he had alreadylearned that there were such restrictions. Hunger he had known; and when hecould not appease his hunger he had felt restriction. The hard obstruction ofthe cave-wall, the sharp nudge of his mother’s nose, the smashing strokeof her paw, the hunger unappeased of several famines, had borne in upon himthat all was not freedom in the world, that to life there was limitations andrestraints. These limitations and restraints were laws. To be obedient to themwas to escape hurt and make for happiness.

He did not reason the question out in this man fashion. He merely classifiedthe things that hurt and the things that did not hurt. And after suchclassification he avoided the things that hurt, the restrictions andrestraints, in order to enjoy the satisfactions and the remunerations of life.

Thus it was that in obedience to the law laid down by his mother, and inobedience to the law of that unknown and nameless thing, fear, he kept awayfrom the mouth of the cave. It remained to him a white wall of light. When hismother was absent, he slept most of the time, while during the intervals thathe was awake he kept very quiet, suppressing the whimpering cries that tickledin his throat and strove for noise.

Once, lying awake, he heard a strange sound in the white wall. He did not knowthat it was a wolverine, standing outside, all a-trembling with its own daring,and cautiously scenting out the contents of the cave. The cub knew only thatthe sniff was strange, a something unclassified, therefore unknown andterrible—for the unknown was one of the chief elements that went into themaking of fear.

The hair bristled upon the grey cub’s back, but it bristled silently. Howwas he to know that this thing that sniffed was a thing at which to bristle? Itwas not born of any knowledge of his, yet it was the visible expression of thefear that was in him, and for which, in his own life, there was no accounting.But fear was accompanied by another instinct—that of concealment. The cubwas in a frenzy of terror, yet he lay without movement or sound, frozen,petrified into immobility, to all appearances dead. His mother, coming home,growled as she smelt the wolverine’s track, and bounded into the cave andlicked and nozzled him with undue vehemence of affection. And the cub felt thatsomehow he had escaped a great hurt.

But there were other forces at work in the cub, the greatest of which wasgrowth. Instinct and law demanded of him obedience. But growth demandeddisobedience. His mother and fear impelled him to keep away from the whitewall. Growth is life, and life is for ever destined to make for light. So therewas no damming up the tide of life that was rising within him—rising withevery mouthful of meat he swallowed, with every breath he drew. In the end, oneday, fear and obedience were swept away by the rush of life, and the cubstraddled and sprawled toward the entrance.

Unlike any other wall with which he had had experience, this wall seemed torecede from him as he approached. No hard surface collided with the tenderlittle nose he thrust out tentatively before him. The substance of the wallseemed as permeable and yielding as light. And as condition, in his eyes, hadthe seeming of form, so he entered into what had been wall to him and bathed inthe substance that composed it.

It was bewildering. He was sprawling through solidity. And ever the light grewbrighter. Fear urged him to go back, but growth drove him on. Suddenly he foundhimself at the mouth of the cave. The wall, inside which he had thoughthimself, as suddenly leaped back before him to an immeasurable distance. Thelight had become painfully bright. He was dazzled by it. Likewise he was madedizzy by this abrupt and tremendous extension of space. Automatically, his eyeswere adjusting themselves to the brightness, focusing themselves to meet theincreased distance of objects. At first, the wall had leaped beyond his vision.He now saw it again; but it had taken upon itself a remarkable remoteness.Also, its appearance had changed. It was now a variegated wall, composed of thetrees that fringed the stream, the opposing mountain that towered above thetrees, and the sky that out-towered the mountain.

A great fear came upon him. This was more of the terrible unknown. He croucheddown on the lip of the cave and gazed out on the world. He was very muchafraid. Because it was unknown, it was hostile to him. Therefore the hair stoodup on end along his back and his lips wrinkled weakly in an attempt at aferocious and intimidating snarl. Out of his puniness and fright he challengedand menaced the whole wide world.

Nothing happened. He continued to gaze, and in his interest he forgot to snarl.Also, he forgot to be afraid. For the time, fear had been routed by growth,while growth had assumed the guise of curiosity. He began to notice nearobjects—an open portion of the stream that flashed in the sun, theblasted pine-tree that stood at the base of the slope, and the slope itself,that ran right up to him and ceased two feet beneath the lip of the cave onwhich he crouched.

Now the grey cub had lived all his days on a level floor. He had neverexperienced the hurt of a fall. He did not know what a fall was. So he steppedboldly out upon the air. His hind-legs still rested on the cave-lip, so he fellforward head downward. The earth struck him a harsh blow on the nose that madehim yelp. Then he began rolling down the slope, over and over. He was in apanic of terror. The unknown had caught him at last. It had gripped savagelyhold of him and was about to wreak upon him some terrific hurt. Growth was nowrouted by fear, and he ki-yi’d like any frightened puppy.

The unknown bore him on he knew not to what frightful hurt, and he yelped andki-yi’d unceasingly. This was a different proposition from crouching infrozen fear while the unknown lurked just alongside. Now the unknown had caughttight hold of him. Silence would do no good. Besides, it was not fear, butterror, that convulsed him.

But the slope grew more gradual, and its base was grass-covered. Here the cublost momentum. When at last he came to a stop, he gave one last agonised yelland then a long, whimpering wail. Also, and quite as a matter of course, asthough in his life he had already made a thousand toilets, he proceeded to lickaway the dry clay that soiled him.

After that he sat up and gazed about him, as might the first man of the earthwho landed upon Mars. The cub had broken through the wall of the world, theunknown had let go its hold of him, and here he was without hurt. But the firstman on Mars would have experienced less unfamiliarity than did he. Without anyantecedent knowledge, without any warning whatever that such existed, he foundhimself an explorer in a totally new world.

Now that the terrible unknown had let go of him, he forgot that the unknown hadany terrors. He was aware only of curiosity in all the things about him. Heinspected the grass beneath him, the moss-berry plant just beyond, and the deadtrunk of the blasted pine that stood on the edge of an open space among thetrees. A squirrel, running around the base of the trunk, came full upon him,and gave him a great fright. He cowered down and snarled. But the squirrel wasas badly scared. It ran up the tree, and from a point of safety chattered backsavagely.

This helped the cub’s courage, and though the woodpecker he nextencountered gave him a start, he proceeded confidently on his way. Such was hisconfidence, that when a moose-bird impudently hopped up to him, he reached outat it with a playful paw. The result was a sharp peck on the end of his nosethat made him cower down and ki-yi. The noise he made was too much for themoose-bird, who sought safety in flight.

But the cub was learning. His misty little mind had already made an unconsciousclassification. There were live things and things not alive. Also, he mustwatch out for the live things. The things not alive remained always in oneplace, but the live things moved about, and there was no telling what theymight do. The thing to expect of them was the unexpected, and for this he mustbe prepared.

He travelled very clumsily. He ran into sticks and things. A twig that hethought a long way off, would the next instant hit him on the nose or rakealong his ribs. There were inequalities of surface. Sometimes he oversteppedand stubbed his nose. Quite as often he understepped and stubbed his feet. Thenthere were the pebbles and stones that turned under him when he trod upon them;and from them he came to know that the things not alive were not all in thesame state of stable equilibrium as was his cave—also, that small thingsnot alive were more liable than large things to fall down or turn over. Butwith every mishap he was learning. The longer he walked, the better he walked.He was adjusting himself. He was learning to calculate his own muscularmovements, to know his physical limitations, to measure distances betweenobjects, and between objects and himself.

His was the luck of the beginner. Born to be a hunter of meat (though he didnot know it), he blundered upon meat just outside his own cave-door on hisfirst foray into the world. It was by sheer blundering that he chanced upon theshrewdly hidden ptarmigan nest. He fell into it. He had essayed to walk alongthe trunk of a fallen pine. The rotten bark gave way under his feet, and with adespairing yelp he pitched down the rounded crescent, smashed through theleafage and stalks of a small bush, and in the heart of the bush, on theground, fetched up in the midst of seven ptarmigan chicks.

They made noises, and at first he was frightened at them. Then he perceivedthat they were very little, and he became bolder. They moved. He placed his pawon one, and its movements were accelerated. This was a source of enjoyment tohim. He smelled it. He picked it up in his mouth. It struggled and tickled histongue. At the same time he was made aware of a sensation of hunger. His jawsclosed together. There was a crunching of fragile bones, and warm blood ran inhis mouth. The taste of it was good. This was meat, the same as his mother gavehim, only it was alive between his teeth and therefore better. So he ate theptarmigan. Nor did he stop till he had devoured the whole brood. Then he lickedhis chops in quite the same way his mother did, and began to crawl out of thebush.

He encountered a feathered whirlwind. He was confused and blinded by the rushof it and the beat of angry wings. He hid his head between his paws and yelped.The blows increased. The mother ptarmigan was in a fury. Then he became angry.He rose up, snarling, striking out with his paws. He sank his tiny teeth intoone of the wings and pulled and tugged sturdily. The ptarmigan struggledagainst him, showering blows upon him with her free wing. It was his firstbattle. He was elated. He forgot all about the unknown. He no longer was afraidof anything. He was fighting, tearing at a live thing that was striking at him.Also, this live thing was meat. The lust to kill was on him. He had justdestroyed little live things. He would now destroy a big live thing. He was toobusy and happy to know that he was happy. He was thrilling and exulting in waysnew to him and greater to him than any he had known before.

He held on to the wing and growled between his tight-clenched teeth. Theptarmigan dragged him out of the bush. When she turned and tried to drag himback into the bush’s shelter, he pulled her away from it and on into theopen. And all the time she was making outcry and striking with her free wing,while feathers were flying like a snow-fall. The pitch to which he was arousedwas tremendous. All the fighting blood of his breed was up in him and surgingthrough him. This was living, though he did not know it. He was realising hisown meaning in the world; he was doing that for which he was made—killingmeat and battling to kill it. He was justifying his existence, than which lifecan do no greater; for life achieves its summit when it does to the uttermostthat which it was equipped to do.

After a time, the ptarmigan ceased her struggling. He still held her by thewing, and they lay on the ground and looked at each other. He tried to growlthreateningly, ferociously. She pecked on his nose, which by now, what ofprevious adventures was sore. He winced but held on. She pecked him again andagain. From wincing he went to whimpering. He tried to back away from her,oblivious to the fact that by his hold on her he dragged her after him. A rainof pecks fell on his ill-used nose. The flood of fight ebbed down in him, and,releasing his prey, he turned tail and scampered on across the open ininglorious retreat.

He lay down to rest on the other side of the open, near the edge of the bushes,his tongue lolling out, his chest heaving and panting, his nose still hurtinghim and causing him to continue his whimper. But as he lay there, suddenlythere came to him a feeling as of something terrible impending. The unknownwith all its terrors rushed upon him, and he shrank back instinctively into theshelter of the bush. As he did so, a draught of air fanned him, and a large,winged body swept ominously and silently past. A hawk, driving down out of theblue, had barely missed him.

While he lay in the bush, recovering from his fright and peering fearfully out,the mother-ptarmigan on the other side of the open space fluttered out of theravaged nest. It was because of her loss that she paid no attention to thewinged bolt of the sky. But the cub saw, and it was a warning and a lesson tohim—the swift downward swoop of the hawk, the short skim of its body justabove the ground, the strike of its talons in the body of the ptarmigan, theptarmigan’s squawk of agony and fright, and the hawk’s rush upwardinto the blue, carrying the ptarmigan away with it.

It was a long time before the cub left its shelter. He had learned much. Livethings were meat. They were good to eat. Also, live things when they were largeenough, could give hurt. It was better to eat small live things like ptarmiganchicks, and to let alone large live things like ptarmigan hens. Nevertheless hefelt a little prick of ambition, a sneaking desire to have another battle withthat ptarmigan hen—only the hawk had carried her away. May be there wereother ptarmigan hens. He would go and see.

He came down a shelving bank to the stream. He had never seen water before. Thefooting looked good. There were no inequalities of surface. He stepped boldlyout on it; and went down, crying with fear, into the embrace of the unknown. Itwas cold, and he gasped, breathing quickly. The water rushed into his lungsinstead of the air that had always accompanied his act of breathing. Thesuffocation he experienced was like the pang of death. To him it signifieddeath. He had no conscious knowledge of death, but like every animal of theWild, he possessed the instinct of death. To him it stood as the greatest ofhurts. It was the very essence of the unknown; it was the sum of the terrors ofthe unknown, the one culminating and unthinkable catastrophe that could happento him, about which he knew nothing and about which he feared everything.

He came to the surface, and the sweet air rushed into his open mouth. He didnot go down again. Quite as though it had been a long-established custom of hishe struck out with all his legs and began to swim. The near bank was a yardaway; but he had come up with his back to it, and the first thing his eyesrested upon was the opposite bank, toward which he immediately began to swim.The stream was a small one, but in the pool it widened out to a score of feet.

Midway in the passage, the current picked up the cub and swept him downstream.He was caught in the miniature rapid at the bottom of the pool. Here was littlechance for swimming. The quiet water had become suddenly angry. Sometimes hewas under, sometimes on top. At all times he was in violent motion, now beingturned over or around, and again, being smashed against a rock. And with everyrock he struck, he yelped. His progress was a series of yelps, from which mighthave been adduced the number of rocks he encountered.

Below the rapid was a second pool, and here, captured by the eddy, he wasgently borne to the bank, and as gently deposited on a bed of gravel. Hecrawled frantically clear of the water and lay down. He had learned some moreabout the world. Water was not alive. Yet it moved. Also, it looked as solid asthe earth, but was without any solidity at all. His conclusion was that thingswere not always what they appeared to be. The cub’s fear of the unknownwas an inherited distrust, and it had now been strengthened by experience.Thenceforth, in the nature of things, he would possess an abiding distrust ofappearances. He would have to learn the reality of a thing before he could puthis faith into it.

One other adventure was destined for him that day. He had recollected thatthere was such a thing in the world as his mother. And then there came to him afeeling that he wanted her more than all the rest of the things in the world.Not only was his body tired with the adventures it had undergone, but hislittle brain was equally tired. In all the days he had lived it had not workedso hard as on this one day. Furthermore, he was sleepy. So he started out tolook for the cave and his mother, feeling at the same time an overwhelming rushof loneliness and helplessness.

He was sprawling along between some bushes, when he heard a sharp intimidatingcry. There was a flash of yellow before his eyes. He saw a weasel leapingswiftly away from him. It was a small live thing, and he had no fear. Then,before him, at his feet, he saw an extremely small live thing, only severalinches long, a young weasel, that, like himself, had disobediently gone outadventuring. It tried to retreat before him. He turned it over with his paw. Itmade a queer, grating noise. The next moment the flash of yellow reappearedbefore his eyes. He heard again the intimidating cry, and at the same instantreceived a sharp blow on the side of the neck and felt the sharp teeth of themother-weasel cut into his flesh.

While he yelped and ki-yi’d and scrambled backward, he saw themother-weasel leap upon her young one and disappear with it into theneighbouring thicket. The cut of her teeth in his neck still hurt, but hisfeelings were hurt more grievously, and he sat down and weakly whimpered. Thismother-weasel was so small and so savage. He was yet to learn that for size andweight the weasel was the most ferocious, vindictive, and terrible of all thekillers of the Wild. But a portion of this knowledge was quickly to be his.

He was still whimpering when the mother-weasel reappeared. She did not rushhim, now that her young one was safe. She approached more cautiously, and thecub had full opportunity to observe her lean, snakelike body, and her head,erect, eager, and snake-like itself. Her sharp, menacing cry sent the hairbristling along his back, and he snarled warningly at her. She came closer andcloser. There was a leap, swifter than his unpractised sight, and the lean,yellow body disappeared for a moment out of the field of his vision. The nextmoment she was at his throat, her teeth buried in his hair and flesh.

At first he snarled and tried to fight; but he was very young, and this wasonly his first day in the world, and his snarl became a whimper, his fight astruggle to escape. The weasel never relaxed her hold. She hung on, striving topress down with her teeth to the great vein where his life-blood bubbled. Theweasel was a drinker of blood, and it was ever her preference to drink from thethroat of life itself.

The grey cub would have died, and there would have been no story to write abouthim, had not the she-wolf come bounding through the bushes. The weasel let gothe cub and flashed at the she-wolf’s throat, missing, but getting a holdon the jaw instead. The she-wolf flirted her head like the snap of a whip,breaking the weasel’s hold and flinging it high in the air. And, still inthe air, the she-wolf’s jaws closed on the lean, yellow body, and theweasel knew death between the crunching teeth.

The cub experienced another access of affection on the part of his mother. Herjoy at finding him seemed even greater than his joy at being found. She nozzledhim and caressed him and licked the cuts made in him by the weasel’steeth. Then, between them, mother and cub, they ate the blood-drinker, andafter that went back to the cave and slept.

CHAPTER V
THE LAW OF MEAT

The cub’s development was rapid. He rested for two days, and thenventured forth from the cave again. It was on this adventure that he found theyoung weasel whose mother he had helped eat, and he saw to it that the youngweasel went the way of its mother. But on this trip he did not get lost. Whenhe grew tired, he found his way back to the cave and slept. And every daythereafter found him out and ranging a wider area.

He began to get accurate measurement of his strength and his weakness, and toknow when to be bold and when to be cautious. He found it expedient to becautious all the time, except for the rare moments, when, assured of his ownintrepidity, he abandoned himself to petty rages and lusts.

He was always a little demon of fury when he chanced upon a stray ptarmigan.Never did he fail to respond savagely to the chatter of the squirrel he hadfirst met on the blasted pine. While the sight of a moose-bird almostinvariably put him into the wildest of rages; for he never forgot the peck onthe nose he had received from the first of that ilk he encountered.

But there were times when even a moose-bird failed to affect him, and thosewere times when he felt himself to be in danger from some other prowling meathunter. He never forgot the hawk, and its moving shadow always sent himcrouching into the nearest thicket. He no longer sprawled and straddled, andalready he was developing the gait of his mother, slinking and furtive,apparently without exertion, yet sliding along with a swiftness that was asdeceptive as it was imperceptible.

In the matter of meat, his luck had been all in the beginning. The sevenptarmigan chicks and the baby weasel represented the sum of his killings. Hisdesire to kill strengthened with the days, and he cherished hungry ambitionsfor the squirrel that chattered so volubly and always informed all wildcreatures that the wolf-cub was approaching. But as birds flew in the air,squirrels could climb trees, and the cub could only try to crawl unobservedupon the squirrel when it was on the ground.

The cub entertained a great respect for his mother. She could get meat, and shenever failed to bring him his share. Further, she was unafraid of things. Itdid not occur to him that this fearlessness was founded upon experience andknowledge. Its effect on him was that of an impression of power. His motherrepresented power; and as he grew older he felt this power in the sharperadmonishment of her paw; while the reproving nudge of her nose gave place tothe slash of her fangs. For this, likewise, he respected his mother. Shecompelled obedience from him, and the older he grew the shorter grew hertemper.

Famine came again, and the cub with clearer consciousness knew once more thebite of hunger. The she-wolf ran herself thin in the quest for meat. She rarelyslept any more in the cave, spending most of her time on the meat-trail, andspending it vainly. This famine was not a long one, but it was severe while itlasted. The cub found no more milk in his mother’s breast, nor did he getone mouthful of meat for himself.

Before, he had hunted in play, for the sheer joyousness of it; now he hunted indeadly earnestness, and found nothing. Yet the failure of it accelerated hisdevelopment. He studied the habits of the squirrel with greater carefulness,and strove with greater craft to steal upon it and surprise it. He studied thewood-mice and tried to dig them out of their burrows; and he learned much aboutthe ways of moose-birds and woodpeckers. And there came a day when thehawk’s shadow did not drive him crouching into the bushes. He had grownstronger and wiser, and more confident. Also, he was desperate. So he sat onhis haunches, conspicuously in an open space, and challenged the hawk down outof the sky. For he knew that there, floating in the blue above him, was meat,the meat his stomach yearned after so insistently. But the hawk refused to comedown and give battle, and the cub crawled away into a thicket and whimpered hisdisappointment and hunger.

The famine broke. The she-wolf brought home meat. It was strange meat,different from any she had ever brought before. It was a lynx kitten, partlygrown, like the cub, but not so large. And it was all for him. His mother hadsatisfied her hunger elsewhere; though he did not know that it was the rest ofthe lynx litter that had gone to satisfy her. Nor did he know the desperatenessof her deed. He knew only that the velvet-furred kitten was meat, and he ateand waxed happier with every mouthful.

A full stomach conduces to inaction, and the cub lay in the cave, sleepingagainst his mother’s side. He was aroused by her snarling. Never had heheard her snarl so terribly. Possibly in her whole life it was the mostterrible snarl she ever gave. There was reason for it, and none knew it betterthan she. A lynx’s lair is not despoiled with impunity. In the full glareof the afternoon light, crouching in the entrance of the cave, the cub saw thelynx-mother. The hair rippled up along his back at the sight. Here was fear,and it did not require his instinct to tell him of it. And if sight alone werenot sufficient, the cry of rage the intruder gave, beginning with a snarl andrushing abruptly upward into a hoarse screech, was convincing enough in itself.

The cub felt the prod of the life that was in him, and stood up and snarledvaliantly by his mother’s side. But she thrust him ignominiously away andbehind her. Because of the low-roofed entrance the lynx could not leap in, andwhen she made a crawling rush of it the she-wolf sprang upon her and pinned herdown. The cub saw little of the battle. There was a tremendous snarling andspitting and screeching. The two animals threshed about, the lynx ripping andtearing with her claws and using her teeth as well, while the she-wolf used herteeth alone.

Once, the cub sprang in and sank his teeth into the hind leg of the lynx. Heclung on, growling savagely. Though he did not know it, by the weight of hisbody he clogged the action of the leg and thereby saved his mother much damage.A change in the battle crushed him under both their bodies and wrenched loosehis hold. The next moment the two mothers separated, and, before they rushedtogether again, the lynx lashed out at the cub with a huge fore-paw that rippedhis shoulder open to the bone and sent him hurtling sidewise against the wall.Then was added to the uproar the cub’s shrill yelp of pain and fright.But the fight lasted so long that he had time to cry himself out and toexperience a second burst of courage; and the end of the battle found him againclinging to a hind-leg and furiously growling between his teeth.

The lynx was dead. But the she-wolf was very weak and sick. At first shecaressed the cub and licked his wounded shoulder; but the blood she had losthad taken with it her strength, and for all of a day and a night she lay by herdead foe’s side, without movement, scarcely breathing. For a week shenever left the cave, except for water, and then her movements were slow andpainful. At the end of that time the lynx was devoured, while theshe-wolf’s wounds had healed sufficiently to permit her to take themeat-trail again.

The cub’s shoulder was stiff and sore, and for some time he limped fromthe terrible slash he had received. But the world now seemed changed. He wentabout in it with greater confidence, with a feeling of prowess that had notbeen his in the days before the battle with the lynx. He had looked upon lifein a more ferocious aspect; he had fought; he had buried his teeth in the fleshof a foe; and he had survived. And because of all this, he carried himself moreboldly, with a touch of defiance that was new in him. He was no longer afraidof minor things, and much of his timidity had vanished, though the unknownnever ceased to press upon him with its mysteries and terrors, intangible andever-menacing.

He began to accompany his mother on the meat-trail, and he saw much of thekilling of meat and began to play his part in it. And in his own dim way helearned the law of meat. There were two kinds of life—his own kind andthe other kind. His own kind included his mother and himself. The other kindincluded all live things that moved. But the other kind was divided. Oneportion was what his own kind killed and ate. This portion was composed of thenon-killers and the small killers. The other portion killed and ate his ownkind, or was killed and eaten by his own kind. And out of this classificationarose the law. The aim of life was meat. Life itself was meat. Life lived onlife. There were the eaters and the eaten. The law was: EAT OR BE EATEN. He didnot formulate the law in clear, set terms and moralise about it. He did noteven think the law; he merely lived the law without thinking about it at all.

He saw the law operating around him on every side. He had eaten the ptarmiganchicks. The hawk had eaten the ptarmigan-mother. The hawk would also have eatenhim. Later, when he had grown more formidable, he wanted to eat the hawk. Hehad eaten the lynx kitten. The lynx-mother would have eaten him had she notherself been killed and eaten. And so it went. The law was being lived abouthim by all live things, and he himself was part and parcel of the law. He was akiller. His only food was meat, live meat, that ran away swiftly before him, orflew into the air, or climbed trees, or hid in the ground, or faced him andfought with him, or turned the tables and ran after him.

Had the cub thought in man-fashion, he might have epitomised life as avoracious appetite and the world as a place wherein ranged a multitude ofappetites, pursuing and being pursued, hunting and being hunted, eating andbeing eaten, all in blindness and confusion, with violence and disorder, achaos of gluttony and slaughter, ruled over by chance, merciless, planless,endless.

But the cub did not think in man-fashion. He did not look at things with widevision. He was single-purposed, and entertained but one thought or desire at atime. Besides the law of meat, there were a myriad other and lesser laws forhim to learn and obey. The world was filled with surprise. The stir of the lifethat was in him, the play of his muscles, was an unending happiness. To rundown meat was to experience thrills and elations. His rages and battles werepleasures. Terror itself, and the mystery of the unknown, led to his living.

And there were easements and satisfactions. To have a full stomach, to dozelazily in the sunshine—such things were remuneration in full for hisardours and toils, while his ardours and tolls were in themselvesself-remunerative. They were expressions of life, and life is always happy whenit is expressing itself. So the cub had no quarrel with his hostileenvironment. He was very much alive, very happy, and very proud of himself.

PART III

CHAPTER I
THE MAKERS OF FIRE

The cub came upon it suddenly. It was his own fault. He had been careless. Hehad left the cave and run down to the stream to drink. It might have been thathe took no notice because he was heavy with sleep. (He had been out all nighton the meat-trail, and had but just then awakened.) And his carelessness mighthave been due to the familiarity of the trail to the pool. He had travelled itoften, and nothing had ever happened on it.

He went down past the blasted pine, crossed the open space, and trotted inamongst the trees. Then, at the same instant, he saw and smelt. Before him,sitting silently on their haunches, were five live things, the like of which hehad never seen before. It was his first glimpse of mankind. But at the sight ofhim the five men did not spring to their feet, nor show their teeth, nor snarl.They did not move, but sat there, silent and ominous.

Nor did the cub move. Every instinct of his nature would have impelled him todash wildly away, had there not suddenly and for the first time arisen in himanother and counter instinct. A great awe descended upon him. He was beatendown to movelessness by an overwhelming sense of his own weakness andlittleness. Here was mastery and power, something far and away beyond him.

The cub had never seen man, yet the instinct concerning man was his. In dimways he recognised in man the animal that had fought itself to primacy over theother animals of the Wild. Not alone out of his own eyes, but out of the eyesof all his ancestors was the cub now looking upon man—out of eyes thathad circled in the darkness around countless winter camp-fires, that had peeredfrom safe distances and from the hearts of thickets at the strange, two-leggedanimal that was lord over living things. The spell of the cub’s heritagewas upon him, the fear and the respect born of the centuries of struggle andthe accumulated experience of the generations. The heritage was too compellingfor a wolf that was only a cub. Had he been full-grown, he would have run away.As it was, he cowered down in a paralysis of fear, already half proffering thesubmission that his kind had proffered from the first time a wolf came in tosit by man’s fire and be made warm.

One of the Indians arose and walked over to him and stooped above him. The cubcowered closer to the ground. It was the unknown, objectified at last, inconcrete flesh and blood, bending over him and reaching down to seize hold ofhim. His hair bristled involuntarily; his lips writhed back and his littlefangs were bared. The hand, poised like doom above him, hesitated, and the manspoke laughing, “Wabam wabisca ip pit tah.” (“Look!The white fangs!”)

The other Indians laughed loudly, and urged the man on to pick up the cub. Asthe hand descended closer and closer, there raged within the cub a battle ofthe instincts. He experienced two great impulsions—to yield and to fight.The resulting action was a compromise. He did both. He yielded till the handalmost touched him. Then he fought, his teeth flashing in a snap that sank theminto the hand. The next moment he received a clout alongside the head thatknocked him over on his side. Then all fight fled out of him. His puppyhood andthe instinct of submission took charge of him. He sat up on his haunches andki-yi’d. But the man whose hand he had bitten was angry. The cub receiveda clout on the other side of his head. Whereupon he sat up and ki-yi’dlouder than ever.

The four Indians laughed more loudly, while even the man who had been bittenbegan to laugh. They surrounded the cub and laughed at him, while he wailed outhis terror and his hurt. In the midst of it, he heard something. The Indiansheard it too. But the cub knew what it was, and with a last, long wail that hadin it more of triumph than grief, he ceased his noise and waited for the comingof his mother, of his ferocious and indomitable mother who fought and killedall things and was never afraid. She was snarling as she ran. She had heard thecry of her cub and was dashing to save him.

She bounded in amongst them, her anxious and militant motherhood making heranything but a pretty sight. But to the cub the spectacle of her protectiverage was pleasing. He uttered a glad little cry and bounded to meet her, whilethe man-animals went back hastily several steps. The she-wolf stood overagainst her cub, facing the men, with bristling hair, a snarl rumbling deep inher throat. Her face was distorted and malignant with menace, even the bridgeof the nose wrinkling from tip to eyes so prodigious was her snarl.

Then it was that a cry went up from one of the men. “Kiche!” waswhat he uttered. It was an exclamation of surprise. The cub felt his motherwilting at the sound.

“Kiche!” the man cried again, this time with sharpness andauthority.

And then the cub saw his mother, the she-wolf, the fearless one, crouching downtill her belly touched the ground, whimpering, wagging her tail, making peacesigns. The cub could not understand. He was appalled. The awe of man rushedover him again. His instinct had been true. His mother verified it. She, too,rendered submission to the man-animals.

The man who had spoken came over to her. He put his hand upon her head, and sheonly crouched closer. She did not snap, nor threaten to snap. The other mencame up, and surrounded her, and felt her, and pawed her, which actions shemade no attempt to resent. They were greatly excited, and made many noises withtheir mouths. These noises were not indication of danger, the cub decided, ashe crouched near his mother still bristling from time to time but doing hisbest to submit.

“It is not strange,” an Indian was saying. “Her father was awolf. It is true, her mother was a dog; but did not my brother tie her out inthe woods all of three nights in the mating season? Therefore was the father ofKiche a wolf.”

“It is a year, Grey Beaver, since she ran away,” spoke a secondIndian.

“It is not strange, Salmon Tongue,” Grey Beaver answered. “Itwas the time of the famine, and there was no meat for the dogs.”

“She has lived with the wolves,” said a third Indian.

“So it would seem, Three Eagles,” Grey Beaver answered, laying hishand on the cub; “and this be the sign of it.”

The cub snarled a little at the touch of the hand, and the hand flew back toadminister a clout. Whereupon the cub covered its fangs, and sank downsubmissively, while the hand, returning, rubbed behind his ears, and up anddown his back.

“This be the sign of it,” Grey Beaver went on. “It is plainthat his mother is Kiche. But his father was a wolf. Wherefore is there in himlittle dog and much wolf. His fangs be white, and White Fang shall be his name.I have spoken. He is my dog. For was not Kiche my brother’s dog? And isnot my brother dead?”

The cub, who had thus received a name in the world, lay and watched. For a timethe man-animals continued to make their mouth-noises. Then Grey Beaver took aknife from a sheath that hung around his neck, and went into the thicket andcut a stick. White Fang watched him. He notched the stick at each end and inthe notches fastened strings of raw-hide. One string he tied around the throatof Kiche. Then he led her to a small pine, around which he tied the otherstring.

White Fang followed and lay down beside her. Salmon Tongue’s hand reachedout to him and rolled him over on his back. Kiche looked on anxiously. WhiteFang felt fear mounting in him again. He could not quite suppress a snarl, buthe made no offer to snap. The hand, with fingers crooked and spread apart,rubbed his stomach in a playful way and rolled him from side to side. It wasridiculous and ungainly, lying there on his back with legs sprawling in theair. Besides, it was a position of such utter helplessness that WhiteFang’s whole nature revolted against it. He could do nothing to defendhimself. If this man-animal intended harm, White Fang knew that he could notescape it. How could he spring away with his four legs in the air above him?Yet submission made him master his fear, and he only growled softly. This growlhe could not suppress; nor did the man-animal resent it by giving him a blow onthe head. And furthermore, such was the strangeness of it, White Fangexperienced an unaccountable sensation of pleasure as the hand rubbed back andforth. When he was rolled on his side he ceased to growl, when the fingerspressed and prodded at the base of his ears the pleasurable sensationincreased; and when, with a final rub and scratch, the man left him alone andwent away, all fear had died out of White Fang. He was to know fear many timesin his dealing with man; yet it was a token of the fearless companionship withman that was ultimately to be his.

After a time, White Fang heard strange noises approaching. He was quick in hisclassification, for he knew them at once for man-animal noises. A few minuteslater the remainder of the tribe, strung out as it was on the march, trailedin. There were more men and many women and children, forty souls of them, andall heavily burdened with camp equipage and outfit. Also there were many dogs;and these, with the exception of the part-grown puppies, were likewise burdenedwith camp outfit. On their backs, in bags that fastened tightly aroundunderneath, the dogs carried from twenty to thirty pounds of weight.

White Fang had never seen dogs before, but at sight of them he felt that theywere his own kind, only somehow different. But they displayed little differencefrom the wolf when they discovered the cub and his mother. There was a rush.White Fang bristled and snarled and snapped in the face of the open-mouthedoncoming wave of dogs, and went down and under them, feeling the sharp slash ofteeth in his body, himself biting and tearing at the legs and bellies abovehim. There was a great uproar. He could hear the snarl of Kiche as she foughtfor him; and he could hear the cries of the man-animals, the sound of clubsstriking upon bodies, and the yelps of pain from the dogs so struck.

Only a few seconds elapsed before he was on his feet again. He could now seethe man-animals driving back the dogs with clubs and stones, defending him,saving him from the savage teeth of his kind that somehow was not his kind. Andthough there was no reason in his brain for a clear conception of so abstract athing as justice, nevertheless, in his own way, he felt the justice of theman-animals, and he knew them for what they were—makers of law andexecutors of law. Also, he appreciated the power with which they administeredthe law. Unlike any animals he had ever encountered, they did not bite norclaw. They enforced their live strength with the power of dead things. Deadthings did their bidding. Thus, sticks and stones, directed by these strangecreatures, leaped through the air like living things, inflicting grievous hurtsupon the dogs.

To his mind this was power unusual, power inconceivable and beyond the natural,power that was godlike. White Fang, in the very nature of him, could never knowanything about gods; at the best he could know only things that were beyondknowing—but the wonder and awe that he had of these man-animals in waysresembled what would be the wonder and awe of man at sight of some celestialcreature, on a mountain top, hurling thunderbolts from either hand at anastonished world.

The last dog had been driven back. The hubbub died down. And White Fang lickedhis hurts and meditated upon this, his first taste of pack-cruelty and hisintroduction to the pack. He had never dreamed that his own kind consisted ofmore than One Eye, his mother, and himself. They had constituted a kind apart,and here, abruptly, he had discovered many more creatures apparently of his ownkind. And there was a subconscious resentment that these, his kind, at firstsight had pitched upon him and tried to destroy him. In the same way heresented his mother being tied with a stick, even though it was done by thesuperior man-animals. It savoured of the trap, of bondage. Yet of the trap andof bondage he knew nothing. Freedom to roam and run and lie down at will, hadbeen his heritage; and here it was being infringed upon. His mother’smovements were restricted to the length of a stick, and by the length of thatsame stick was he restricted, for he had not yet got beyond the need of hismother’s side.

He did not like it. Nor did he like it when the man-animals arose and went onwith their march; for a tiny man-animal took the other end of the stick and ledKiche captive behind him, and behind Kiche followed White Fang, greatlyperturbed and worried by this new adventure he had entered upon.

They went down the valley of the stream, far beyond White Fang’s widestranging, until they came to the end of the valley, where the stream ran intothe Mackenzie River. Here, where canoes were cached on poles high in the airand where stood fish-racks for the drying of fish, camp was made; and WhiteFang looked on with wondering eyes. The superiority of these man-animalsincreased with every moment. There was their mastery over all thesesharp-fanged dogs. It breathed of power. But greater than that, to thewolf-cub, was their mastery over things not alive; their capacity tocommunicate motion to unmoving things; their capacity to change the very faceof the world.

It was this last that especially affected him. The elevation of frames of polescaught his eye; yet this in itself was not so remarkable, being done by thesame creatures that flung sticks and stones to great distances. But when theframes of poles were made into tepees by being covered with cloth and skins,White Fang was astounded. It was the colossal bulk of them that impressed him.They arose around him, on every side, like some monstrous quick-growing form oflife. They occupied nearly the whole circumference of his field of vision. Hewas afraid of them. They loomed ominously above him; and when the breezestirred them into huge movements, he cowered down in fear, keeping his eyeswarily upon them, and prepared to spring away if they attempted to precipitatethemselves upon him.

But in a short while his fear of the tepees passed away. He saw the women andchildren passing in and out of them without harm, and he saw the dogs tryingoften to get into them, and being driven away with sharp words and flyingstones. After a time, he left Kiche’s side and crawled cautiously towardthe wall of the nearest tepee. It was the curiosity of growth that urged himon—the necessity of learning and living and doing that brings experience.The last few inches to the wall of the tepee were crawled with painful slownessand precaution. The day’s events had prepared him for the unknown tomanifest itself in most stupendous and unthinkable ways. At last his nosetouched the canvas. He waited. Nothing happened. Then he smelled the strangefabric, saturated with the man-smell. He closed on the canvas with his teethand gave a gentle tug. Nothing happened, though the adjacent portions of thetepee moved. He tugged harder. There was a greater movement. It was delightful.He tugged still harder, and repeatedly, until the whole tepee was in motion.Then the sharp cry of a squaw inside sent him scampering back to Kiche. Butafter that he was afraid no more of the looming bulks of the tepees.

A moment later he was straying away again from his mother. Her stick was tiedto a peg in the ground and she could not follow him. A part-grown puppy,somewhat larger and older than he, came toward him slowly, with ostentatiousand belligerent importance. The puppy’s name, as White Fang was afterwardto hear him called, was Lip-lip. He had had experience in puppy fights and wasalready something of a bully.

Lip-lip was White Fang’s own kind, and, being only a puppy, did not seemdangerous; so White Fang prepared to meet him in a friendly spirit. But whenthe strangers walk became stiff-legged and his lips lifted clear of his teeth,White Fang stiffened too, and answered with lifted lips. They half circledabout each other, tentatively, snarling and bristling. This lasted severalminutes, and White Fang was beginning to enjoy it, as a sort of game. Butsuddenly, with remarkable swiftness, Lip-lip leaped in, delivering a slashingsnap, and leaped away again. The snap had taken effect on the shoulder that hadbeen hurt by the lynx and that was still sore deep down near the bone. Thesurprise and hurt of it brought a yelp out of White Fang; but the next moment,in a rush of anger, he was upon Lip-lip and snapping viciously.

But Lip-lip had lived his life in camp and had fought many puppy fights. Threetimes, four times, and half a dozen times, his sharp little teeth scored on thenewcomer, until White Fang, yelping shamelessly, fled to the protection of hismother. It was the first of the many fights he was to have with Lip-lip, forthey were enemies from the start, born so, with natures destined perpetually toclash.

Kiche licked White Fang soothingly with her tongue, and tried to prevail uponhim to remain with her. But his curiosity was rampant, and several minuteslater he was venturing forth on a new quest. He came upon one of theman-animals, Grey Beaver, who was squatting on his hams and doing somethingwith sticks and dry moss spread before him on the ground. White Fang came nearto him and watched. Grey Beaver made mouth-noises which White Fang interpretedas not hostile, so he came still nearer.

Women and children were carrying more sticks and branches to Grey Beaver. Itwas evidently an affair of moment. White Fang came in until he touched GreyBeaver’s knee, so curious was he, and already forgetful that this was aterrible man-animal. Suddenly he saw a strange thing like mist beginning toarise from the sticks and moss beneath Grey Beaver’s hands. Then, amongstthe sticks themselves, appeared a live thing, twisting and turning, of a colourlike the colour of the sun in the sky. White Fang knew nothing about fire. Itdrew him as the light, in the mouth of the cave had drawn him in his earlypuppyhood. He crawled the several steps toward the flame. He heard Grey Beaverchuckle above him, and he knew the sound was not hostile. Then his nose touchedthe flame, and at the same instant his little tongue went out to it.

For a moment he was paralysed. The unknown, lurking in the midst of the sticksand moss, was savagely clutching him by the nose. He scrambled backward,bursting out in an astonished explosion of ki-yi’s. At the sound, Kicheleaped snarling to the end of her stick, and there raged terribly because shecould not come to his aid. But Grey Beaver laughed loudly, and slapped histhighs, and told the happening to all the rest of the camp, till everybody waslaughing uproariously. But White Fang sat on his haunches and ki-yi’d andki-yi’d, a forlorn and pitiable little figure in the midst of theman-animals.

It was the worst hurt he had ever known. Both nose and tongue had been scorchedby the live thing, sun-coloured, that had grown up under Grey Beaver’shands. He cried and cried interminably, and every fresh wail was greeted bybursts of laughter on the part of the man-animals. He tried to soothe his nosewith his tongue, but the tongue was burnt too, and the two hurts comingtogether produced greater hurt; whereupon he cried more hopelessly andhelplessly than ever.

And then shame came to him. He knew laughter and the meaning of it. It is notgiven us to know how some animals know laughter, and know when they are beinglaughed at; but it was this same way that White Fang knew it. And he felt shamethat the man-animals should be laughing at him. He turned and fled away, notfrom the hurt of the fire, but from the laughter that sank even deeper, andhurt in the spirit of him. And he fled to Kiche, raging at the end of her sticklike an animal gone mad—to Kiche, the one creature in the world who wasnot laughing at him.

Twilight drew down and night came on, and White Fang lay by his mother’sside. His nose and tongue still hurt, but he was perplexed by a greatertrouble. He was homesick. He felt a vacancy in him, a need for the hush andquietude of the stream and the cave in the cliff. Life had become too populous.There were so many of the man-animals, men, women, and children, all makingnoises and irritations. And there were the dogs, ever squabbling and bickering,bursting into uproars and creating confusions. The restful loneliness of theonly life he had known was gone. Here the very air was palpitant with life. Ithummed and buzzed unceasingly. Continually changing its intensity and abruptlyvariant in pitch, it impinged on his nerves and senses, made him nervous andrestless and worried him with a perpetual imminence of happening.

He watched the man-animals coming and going and moving about the camp. Infashion distantly resembling the way men look upon the gods they create, solooked White Fang upon the man-animals before him. They were superiorcreatures, of a verity, gods. To his dim comprehension they were as muchwonder-workers as gods are to men. They were creatures of mastery, possessingall manner of unknown and impossible potencies, overlords of the alive and thenot alive—making obey that which moved, imparting movement to that whichdid not move, and making life, sun-coloured and biting life, to grow out ofdead moss and wood. They were fire-makers! They were gods.

CHAPTER II
THE BONDAGE

The days were thronged with experience for White Fang. During the time thatKiche was tied by the stick, he ran about over all the camp, inquiring,investigating, learning. He quickly came to know much of the ways of theman-animals, but familiarity did not breed contempt. The more he came to knowthem, the more they vindicated their superiority, the more they displayed theirmysterious powers, the greater loomed their god-likeness.

To man has been given the grief, often, of seeing his gods overthrown and hisaltars crumbling; but to the wolf and the wild dog that have come in to crouchat man’s feet, this grief has never come. Unlike man, whose gods are ofthe unseen and the overguessed, vapours and mists of fancy eluding thegarmenture of reality, wandering wraiths of desired goodness and power,intangible out-croppings of self into the realm of spirit—unlike man, thewolf and the wild dog that have come in to the fire find their gods in theliving flesh, solid to the touch, occupying earth-space and requiring time forthe accomplishment of their ends and their existence. No effort of faith isnecessary to believe in such a god; no effort of will can possibly inducedisbelief in such a god. There is no getting away from it. There it stands, onits two hind-legs, club in hand, immensely potential, passionate and wrathfuland loving, god and mystery and power all wrapped up and around by flesh thatbleeds when it is torn and that is good to eat like any flesh.

And so it was with White Fang. The man-animals were gods unmistakable andunescapable. As his mother, Kiche, had rendered her allegiance to them at thefirst cry of her name, so he was beginning to render his allegiance. He gavethem the trail as a privilege indubitably theirs. When they walked, he got outof their way. When they called, he came. When they threatened, he cowered down.When they commanded him to go, he went away hurriedly. For behind any wish oftheirs was power to enforce that wish, power that hurt, power that expresseditself in clouts and clubs, in flying stones and stinging lashes of whips.

He belonged to them as all dogs belonged to them. His actions were theirs tocommand. His body was theirs to maul, to stamp upon, to tolerate. Such was thelesson that was quickly borne in upon him. It came hard, going as it did,counter to much that was strong and dominant in his own nature; and, while hedisliked it in the learning of it, unknown to himself he was learning to likeit. It was a placing of his destiny in another’s hands, a shifting of theresponsibilities of existence. This in itself was compensation, for it isalways easier to lean upon another than to stand alone.

But it did not all happen in a day, this giving over of himself, body and soul,to the man-animals. He could not immediately forego his wild heritage and hismemories of the Wild. There were days when he crept to the edge of the forestand stood and listened to something calling him far and away. And always hereturned, restless and uncomfortable, to whimper softly and wistfully atKiche’s side and to lick her face with eager, questioning tongue.

White Fang learned rapidly the ways of the camp. He knew the injustice andgreediness of the older dogs when meat or fish was thrown out to be eaten. Hecame to know that men were more just, children more cruel, and women morekindly and more likely to toss him a bit of meat or bone. And after two orthree painful adventures with the mothers of part-grown puppies, he came intothe knowledge that it was always good policy to let such mothers alone, to keepaway from them as far as possible, and to avoid them when he saw them coming.

But the bane of his life was Lip-lip. Larger, older, and stronger, Lip-lip hadselected White Fang for his special object of persecution. White Fang foughtwillingly enough, but he was outclassed. His enemy was too big. Lip-lip becamea nightmare to him. Whenever he ventured away from his mother, the bully wassure to appear, trailing at his heels, snarling at him, picking upon him, andwatchful of an opportunity, when no man-animal was near, to spring upon him andforce a fight. As Lip-lip invariably won, he enjoyed it hugely. It became hischief delight in life, as it became White Fang’s chief torment.

But the effect upon White Fang was not to cow him. Though he suffered most ofthe damage and was always defeated, his spirit remained unsubdued. Yet a badeffect was produced. He became malignant and morose. His temper had been savageby birth, but it became more savage under this unending persecution. Thegenial, playful, puppyish side of him found little expression. He never playedand gambolled about with the other puppies of the camp. Lip-lip would notpermit it. The moment White Fang appeared near them, Lip-lip was upon him,bullying and hectoring him, or fighting with him until he had driven him away.

The effect of all this was to rob White Fang of much of his puppyhood and tomake him in his comportment older than his age. Denied the outlet, throughplay, of his energies, he recoiled upon himself and developed his mentalprocesses. He became cunning; he had idle time in which to devote himself tothoughts of trickery. Prevented from obtaining his share of meat and fish whena general feed was given to the camp-dogs, he became a clever thief. He had toforage for himself, and he foraged well, though he was oft-times a plague tothe squaws in consequence. He learned to sneak about camp, to be crafty, toknow what was going on everywhere, to see and to hear everything and to reasonaccordingly, and successfully to devise ways and means of avoiding hisimplacable persecutor.

It was early in the days of his persecution that he played his first really bigcrafty game and got therefrom his first taste of revenge. As Kiche, when withthe wolves, had lured out to destruction dogs from the camps of men, so WhiteFang, in manner somewhat similar, lured Lip-lip into Kiche’s avengingjaws. Retreating before Lip-lip, White Fang made an indirect flight that led inand out and around the various tepees of the camp. He was a good runner,swifter than any puppy of his size, and swifter than Lip-lip. But he did notrun his best in this chase. He barely held his own, one leap ahead of hispursuer.

Lip-lip, excited by the chase and by the persistent nearness of his victim,forgot caution and locality. When he remembered locality, it was too late.Dashing at top speed around a tepee, he ran full tilt into Kiche lying at theend of her stick. He gave one yelp of consternation, and then her punishingjaws closed upon him. She was tied, but he could not get away from her easily.She rolled him off his legs so that he could not run, while she repeatedlyripped and slashed him with her fangs.

When at last he succeeded in rolling clear of her, he crawled to his feet,badly dishevelled, hurt both in body and in spirit. His hair was standing outall over him in tufts where her teeth had mauled. He stood where he had arisen,opened his mouth, and broke out the long, heart-broken puppy wail. But eventhis he was not allowed to complete. In the middle of it, White Fang, rushingin, sank his teeth into Lip-lip’s hind leg. There was no fight left inLip-lip, and he ran away shamelessly, his victim hot on his heels and worryinghim all the way back to his own tepee. Here the squaws came to his aid, andWhite Fang, transformed into a raging demon, was finally driven off only by afusillade of stones.

Came the day when Grey Beaver, deciding that the liability of her running awaywas past, released Kiche. White Fang was delighted with his mother’sfreedom. He accompanied her joyfully about the camp; and, so long as heremained close by her side, Lip-lip kept a respectful distance. White-Fang evenbristled up to him and walked stiff-legged, but Lip-lip ignored the challenge.He was no fool himself, and whatever vengeance he desired to wreak, he couldwait until he caught White Fang alone.

Later on that day, Kiche and White Fang strayed into the edge of the woods nextto the camp. He had led his mother there, step by step, and now when shestopped, he tried to inveigle her farther. The stream, the lair, and the quietwoods were calling to him, and he wanted her to come. He ran on a few steps,stopped, and looked back. She had not moved. He whined pleadingly, and scurriedplayfully in and out of the underbrush. He ran back to her, licked her face,and ran on again. And still she did not move. He stopped and regarded her, allof an intentness and eagerness, physically expressed, that slowly faded out ofhim as she turned her head and gazed back at the camp.

There was something calling to him out there in the open. His mother heard ittoo. But she heard also that other and louder call, the call of the fire and ofman—the call which has been given alone of all animals to the wolf toanswer, to the wolf and the wild-dog, who are brothers.

Kiche turned and slowly trotted back toward camp. Stronger than the physicalrestraint of the stick was the clutch of the camp upon her. Unseen andoccultly, the gods still gripped with their power and would not let her go.White Fang sat down in the shadow of a birch and whimpered softly. There was astrong smell of pine, and subtle wood fragrances filled the air, reminding himof his old life of freedom before the days of his bondage. But he was stillonly a part-grown puppy, and stronger than the call either of man or of theWild was the call of his mother. All the hours of his short life he haddepended upon her. The time was yet to come for independence. So he arose andtrotted forlornly back to camp, pausing once, and twice, to sit down andwhimper and to listen to the call that still sounded in the depths of theforest.

In the Wild the time of a mother with her young is short; but under thedominion of man it is sometimes even shorter. Thus it was with White Fang. GreyBeaver was in the debt of Three Eagles. Three Eagles was going away on a tripup the Mackenzie to the Great Slave Lake. A strip of scarlet cloth, a bearskin,twenty cartridges, and Kiche, went to pay the debt. White Fang saw his mothertaken aboard Three Eagles’ canoe, and tried to follow her. A blow fromThree Eagles knocked him backward to the land. The canoe shoved off. He spranginto the water and swam after it, deaf to the sharp cries of Grey Beaver toreturn. Even a man-animal, a god, White Fang ignored, such was the terror hewas in of losing his mother.

But gods are accustomed to being obeyed, and Grey Beaver wrathfully launched acanoe in pursuit. When he overtook White Fang, he reached down and by the napeof the neck lifted him clear of the water. He did not deposit him at once inthe bottom of the canoe. Holding him suspended with one hand, with the otherhand he proceeded to give him a beating. And it was a beating. His handwas heavy. Every blow was shrewd to hurt; and he delivered a multitude ofblows.

Impelled by the blows that rained upon him, now from this side, now from that,White Fang swung back and forth like an erratic and jerky pendulum. Varyingwere the emotions that surged through him. At first, he had known surprise.Then came a momentary fear, when he yelped several times to the impact of thehand. But this was quickly followed by anger. His free nature asserted itself,and he showed his teeth and snarled fearlessly in the face of the wrathful god.This but served to make the god more wrathful. The blows came faster, heavier,more shrewd to hurt.

Grey Beaver continued to beat, White Fang continued to snarl. But this couldnot last for ever. One or the other must give over, and that one was WhiteFang. Fear surged through him again. For the first time he was being reallyman-handled. The occasional blows of sticks and stones he had previouslyexperienced were as caresses compared with this. He broke down and began to cryand yelp. For a time each blow brought a yelp from him; but fear passed intoterror, until finally his yelps were voiced in unbroken succession, unconnectedwith the rhythm of the punishment.

At last Grey Beaver withheld his hand. White Fang, hanging limply, continued tocry. This seemed to satisfy his master, who flung him down roughly in thebottom of the canoe. In the meantime the canoe had drifted down the stream.Grey Beaver picked up the paddle. White Fang was in his way. He spurned himsavagely with his foot. In that moment White Fang’s free nature flashedforth again, and he sank his teeth into the moccasined foot.

The beating that had gone before was as nothing compared with the beating henow received. Grey Beaver’s wrath was terrible; likewise was WhiteFang’s fright. Not only the hand, but the hard wooden paddle was usedupon him; and he was bruised and sore in all his small body when he was againflung down in the canoe. Again, and this time with purpose, did Grey Beaverkick him. White Fang did not repeat his attack on the foot. He had learnedanother lesson of his bondage. Never, no matter what the circumstance, must hedare to bite the god who was lord and master over him; the body of the lord andmaster was sacred, not to be defiled by the teeth of such as he. That wasevidently the crime of crimes, the one offence there was no condoning noroverlooking.

When the canoe touched the shore, White Fang lay whimpering and motionless,waiting the will of Grey Beaver. It was Grey Beaver’s will that he shouldgo ashore, for ashore he was flung, striking heavily on his side and hurtinghis bruises afresh. He crawled tremblingly to his feet and stood whimpering.Lip-lip, who had watched the whole proceeding from the bank, now rushed uponhim, knocking him over and sinking his teeth into him. White Fang was toohelpless to defend himself, and it would have gone hard with him had not GreyBeaver’s foot shot out, lifting Lip-lip into the air with its violence sothat he smashed down to earth a dozen feet away. This was theman-animal’s justice; and even then, in his own pitiable plight, WhiteFang experienced a little grateful thrill. At Grey Beaver’s heels helimped obediently through the village to the tepee. And so it came that WhiteFang learned that the right to punish was something the gods reserved forthemselves and denied to the lesser creatures under them.

That night, when all was still, White Fang remembered his mother and sorrowedfor her. He sorrowed too loudly and woke up Grey Beaver, who beat him. Afterthat he mourned gently when the gods were around. But sometimes, straying offto the edge of the woods by himself, he gave vent to his grief, and cried itout with loud whimperings and wailings.

It was during this period that he might have harkened to the memories of thelair and the stream and run back to the Wild. But the memory of his mother heldhim. As the hunting man-animals went out and came back, so she would come backto the village some time. So he remained in his bondage waiting for her.

But it was not altogether an unhappy bondage. There was much to interest him.Something was always happening. There was no end to the strange things thesegods did, and he was always curious to see. Besides, he was learning how to getalong with Grey Beaver. Obedience, rigid, undeviating obedience, was what wasexacted of him; and in return he escaped beatings and his existence wastolerated.

Nay, Grey Beaver himself sometimes tossed him a piece of meat, and defended himagainst the other dogs in the eating of it. And such a piece of meat was ofvalue. It was worth more, in some strange way, then a dozen pieces of meat fromthe hand of a squaw. Grey Beaver never petted nor caressed. Perhaps it was theweight of his hand, perhaps his justice, perhaps the sheer power of him, andperhaps it was all these things that influenced White Fang; for a certain tieof attachment was forming between him and his surly lord.

Insidiously, and by remote ways, as well as by the power of stick and stone andclout of hand, were the shackles of White Fang’s bondage being rivetedupon him. The qualities in his kind that in the beginning made it possible forthem to come in to the fires of men, were qualities capable of development.They were developing in him, and the camp-life, replete with misery as it was,was secretly endearing itself to him all the time. But White Fang was unawareof it. He knew only grief for the loss of Kiche, hope for her return, and ahungry yearning for the free life that had been his.

CHAPTER III
THE OUTCAST

Lip-lip continued so to darken his days that White Fang became wickeder andmore ferocious than it was his natural right to be. Savageness was a part ofhis make-up, but the savageness thus developed exceeded his make-up. Heacquired a reputation for wickedness amongst the man-animals themselves.Wherever there was trouble and uproar in camp, fighting and squabbling or theoutcry of a squaw over a bit of stolen meat, they were sure to find White Fangmixed up in it and usually at the bottom of it. They did not bother to lookafter the causes of his conduct. They saw only the effects, and the effectswere bad. He was a sneak and a thief, a mischief-maker, a fomenter of trouble;and irate squaws told him to his face, the while he eyed them alert and readyto dodge any quick-flung missile, that he was a wolf and worthless and bound tocome to an evil end.

He found himself an outcast in the midst of the populous camp. All the youngdogs followed Lip-lip’s lead. There was a difference between White Fangand them. Perhaps they sensed his wild-wood breed, and instinctively felt forhim the enmity that the domestic dog feels for the wolf. But be that as it may,they joined with Lip-lip in the persecution. And, once declared against him,they found good reason to continue declared against him. One and all, from timeto time, they felt his teeth; and to his credit, he gave more than he received.Many of them he could whip in single fight; but single fight was denied him.The beginning of such a fight was a signal for all the young dogs in camp tocome running and pitch upon him.

Out of this pack-persecution he learned two important things: how to take careof himself in a mass-fight against him—and how, on a single dog, toinflict the greatest amount of damage in the briefest space of time. To keepone’s feet in the midst of the hostile mass meant life, and this helearnt well. He became cat-like in his ability to stay on his feet. Even growndogs might hurtle him backward or sideways with the impact of their heavybodies; and backward or sideways he would go, in the air or sliding on theground, but always with his legs under him and his feet downward to the motherearth.

When dogs fight, there are usually preliminaries to the actualcombat—snarlings and bristlings and stiff-legged struttings. But WhiteFang learned to omit these preliminaries. Delay meant the coming against him ofall the young dogs. He must do his work quickly and get away. So he learnt togive no warning of his intention. He rushed in and snapped and slashed on theinstant, without notice, before his foe could prepare to meet him. Thus helearned how to inflict quick and severe damage. Also he learned the value ofsurprise. A dog, taken off its guard, its shoulder slashed open or its earripped in ribbons before it knew what was happening, was a dog half whipped.

Furthermore, it was remarkably easy to overthrow a dog taken by surprise; whilea dog, thus overthrown, invariably exposed for a moment the soft underside ofits neck—the vulnerable point at which to strike for its life. White Fangknew this point. It was a knowledge bequeathed to him directly from the huntinggeneration of wolves. So it was that White Fang’s method when he took theoffensive, was: first to find a young dog alone; second, to surprise it andknock it off its feet; and third, to drive in with his teeth at the softthroat.

Being but partly grown his jaws had not yet become large enough nor strongenough to make his throat-attack deadly; but many a young dog went around campwith a lacerated throat in token of White Fang’s intention. And one day,catching one of his enemies alone on the edge of the woods, he managed, byrepeatedly overthrowing him and attacking the throat, to cut the great vein andlet out the life. There was a great row that night. He had been observed, thenews had been carried to the dead dog’s master, the squaws remembered allthe instances of stolen meat, and Grey Beaver was beset by many angry voices.But he resolutely held the door of his tepee, inside which he had placed theculprit, and refused to permit the vengeance for which his tribespeopleclamoured.

White Fang became hated by man and dog. During this period of his developmenthe never knew a moment’s security. The tooth of every dog was againsthim, the hand of every man. He was greeted with snarls by his kind, with cursesand stones by his gods. He lived tensely. He was always keyed up, alert forattack, wary of being attacked, with an eye for sudden and unexpected missiles,prepared to act precipitately and coolly, to leap in with a flash of teeth, orto leap away with a menacing snarl.

As for snarling he could snarl more terribly than any dog, young or old, incamp. The intent of the snarl is to warn or frighten, and judgment is requiredto know when it should be used. White Fang knew how to make it and when to makeit. Into his snarl he incorporated all that was vicious, malignant, andhorrible. With nose serrulated by continuous spasms, hair bristling inrecurrent waves, tongue whipping out like a red snake and whipping back again,ears flattened down, eyes gleaming hatred, lips wrinkled back, and fangsexposed and dripping, he could compel a pause on the part of almost anyassailant. A temporary pause, when taken off his guard, gave him the vitalmoment in which to think and determine his action. But often a pause so gainedlengthened out until it evolved into a complete cessation from the attack. Andbefore more than one of the grown dogs White Fang’s snarl enabled him tobeat an honourable retreat.

An outcast himself from the pack of the part-grown dogs, his sanguinary methodsand remarkable efficiency made the pack pay for its persecution of him. Notpermitted himself to run with the pack, the curious state of affairs obtainedthat no member of the pack could run outside the pack. White Fang would notpermit it. What of his bushwhacking and waylaying tactics, the young dogs wereafraid to run by themselves. With the exception of Lip-lip, they were compelledto hunch together for mutual protection against the terrible enemy they hadmade. A puppy alone by the river bank meant a puppy dead or a puppy thataroused the camp with its shrill pain and terror as it fled back from thewolf-cub that had waylaid it.

But White Fang’s reprisals did not cease, even when the young dogs hadlearned thoroughly that they must stay together. He attacked them when hecaught them alone, and they attacked him when they were bunched. The sight ofhim was sufficient to start them rushing after him, at which times hisswiftness usually carried him into safety. But woe the dog that outran hisfellows in such pursuit! White Fang had learned to turn suddenly upon thepursuer that was ahead of the pack and thoroughly to rip him up before the packcould arrive. This occurred with great frequency, for, once in full cry, thedogs were prone to forget themselves in the excitement of the chase, whileWhite Fang never forgot himself. Stealing backward glances as he ran, he wasalways ready to whirl around and down the overzealous pursuer that outran hisfellows.

Young dogs are bound to play, and out of the exigencies of the situation theyrealised their play in this mimic warfare. Thus it was that the hunt of WhiteFang became their chief game—a deadly game, withal, and at all times aserious game. He, on the other hand, being the fastest-footed, was unafraid toventure anywhere. During the period that he waited vainly for his mother tocome back, he led the pack many a wild chase through the adjacent woods. Butthe pack invariably lost him. Its noise and outcry warned him of its presence,while he ran alone, velvet-footed, silently, a moving shadow among the treesafter the manner of his father and mother before him. Further he was moredirectly connected with the Wild than they; and he knew more of its secrets andstratagems. A favourite trick of his was to lose his trail in running water andthen lie quietly in a near-by thicket while their baffled cries arose aroundhim.

Hated by his kind and by mankind, indomitable, perpetually warred upon andhimself waging perpetual war, his development was rapid and one-sided. This wasno soil for kindliness and affection to blossom in. Of such things he had notthe faintest glimmering. The code he learned was to obey the strong and tooppress the weak. Grey Beaver was a god, and strong. Therefore White Fangobeyed him. But the dog younger or smaller than himself was weak, a thing to bedestroyed. His development was in the direction of power. In order to face theconstant danger of hurt and even of destruction, his predatory and protectivefaculties were unduly developed. He became quicker of movement than the otherdogs, swifter of foot, craftier, deadlier, more lithe, more lean with ironlikemuscle and sinew, more enduring, more cruel, more ferocious, and moreintelligent. He had to become all these things, else he would not have held hisown nor survive the hostile environment in which he found himself.

CHAPTER IV
THE TRAIL OF THE GODS

In the fall of the year, when the days were shortening and the bite of thefrost was coming into the air, White Fang got his chance for liberty. Forseveral days there had been a great hubbub in the village. The summer camp wasbeing dismantled, and the tribe, bag and baggage, was preparing to go off tothe fall hunting. White Fang watched it all with eager eyes, and when thetepees began to come down and the canoes were loading at the bank, heunderstood. Already the canoes were departing, and some had disappeared downthe river.

Quite deliberately he determined to stay behind. He waited his opportunity toslink out of camp to the woods. Here, in the running stream where ice wasbeginning to form, he hid his trail. Then he crawled into the heart of a densethicket and waited. The time passed by, and he slept intermittently for hours.Then he was aroused by Grey Beaver’s voice calling him by name. Therewere other voices. White Fang could hear Grey Beaver’s squaw taking partin the search, and Mit-sah, who was Grey Beaver’s son.

White Fang trembled with fear, and though the impulse came to crawl out of hishiding-place, he resisted it. After a time the voices died away, and some timeafter that he crept out to enjoy the success of his undertaking. Darkness wascoming on, and for a while he played about among the trees, pleasuring in hisfreedom. Then, and quite suddenly, he became aware of loneliness. He sat downto consider, listening to the silence of the forest and perturbed by it. Thatnothing moved nor sounded, seemed ominous. He felt the lurking of danger,unseen and unguessed. He was suspicious of the looming bulks of the trees andof the dark shadows that might conceal all manner of perilous things.

Then it was cold. Here was no warm side of a tepee against which to snuggle.The frost was in his feet, and he kept lifting first one fore-foot and then theother. He curved his bushy tail around to cover them, and at the same time hesaw a vision. There was nothing strange about it. Upon his inward sight wasimpressed a succession of memory-pictures. He saw the camp again, the tepees,and the blaze of the fires. He heard the shrill voices of the women, the gruffbasses of the men, and the snarling of the dogs. He was hungry, and heremembered pieces of meat and fish that had been thrown him. Here was no meat,nothing but a threatening and inedible silence.

His bondage had softened him. Irresponsibility had weakened him. He hadforgotten how to shift for himself. The night yawned about him. His senses,accustomed to the hum and bustle of the camp, used to the continuous impact ofsights and sounds, were now left idle. There was nothing to do, nothing to seenor hear. They strained to catch some interruption of the silence andimmobility of nature. They were appalled by inaction and by the feel ofsomething terrible impending.

He gave a great start of fright. A colossal and formless something was rushingacross the field of his vision. It was a tree-shadow flung by the moon, fromwhose face the clouds had been brushed away. Reassured, he whimpered softly;then he suppressed the whimper for fear that it might attract the attention ofthe lurking dangers.

A tree, contracting in the cool of the night, made a loud noise. It wasdirectly above him. He yelped in his fright. A panic seized him, and he ranmadly toward the village. He knew an overpowering desire for the protection andcompanionship of man. In his nostrils was the smell of the camp-smoke. In hisears the camp-sounds and cries were ringing loud. He passed out of the forestand into the moonlit open where were no shadows nor darknesses. But no villagegreeted his eyes. He had forgotten. The village had gone away.

His wild flight ceased abruptly. There was no place to which to flee. He slunkforlornly through the deserted camp, smelling the rubbish-heaps and thediscarded rags and tags of the gods. He would have been glad for the rattle ofstones about him, flung by an angry squaw, glad for the hand of Grey Beaverdescending upon him in wrath; while he would have welcomed with delight Lip-lipand the whole snarling, cowardly pack.

He came to where Grey Beaver’s tepee had stood. In the centre of thespace it had occupied, he sat down. He pointed his nose at the moon. His throatwas afflicted by rigid spasms, his mouth opened, and in a heart-broken crybubbled up his loneliness and fear, his grief for Kiche, all his past sorrowsand miseries as well as his apprehension of sufferings and dangers to come. Itwas the long wolf-howl, full-throated and mournful, the first howl he had everuttered.

The coming of daylight dispelled his fears but increased his loneliness. Thenaked earth, which so shortly before had been so populous; thrust hisloneliness more forcibly upon him. It did not take him long to make up hismind. He plunged into the forest and followed the river bank down the stream.All day he ran. He did not rest. He seemed made to run on for ever. Hisiron-like body ignored fatigue. And even after fatigue came, his heritage ofendurance braced him to endless endeavour and enabled him to drive hiscomplaining body onward.

Where the river swung in against precipitous bluffs, he climbed the highmountains behind. Rivers and streams that entered the main river he forded orswam. Often he took to the rim-ice that was beginning to form, and more thanonce he crashed through and struggled for life in the icy current. Always hewas on the lookout for the trail of the gods where it might leave the river andproceed inland.

White Fang was intelligent beyond the average of his kind; yet his mentalvision was not wide enough to embrace the other bank of the Mackenzie. What ifthe trail of the gods led out on that side? It never entered his head. Lateron, when he had travelled more and grown older and wiser and come to know moreof trails and rivers, it might be that he could grasp and apprehend such apossibility. But that mental power was yet in the future. Just now he ranblindly, his own bank of the Mackenzie alone entering into his calculations.

All night he ran, blundering in the darkness into mishaps and obstacles thatdelayed but did not daunt. By the middle of the second day he had been runningcontinuously for thirty hours, and the iron of his flesh was giving out. It wasthe endurance of his mind that kept him going. He had not eaten in forty hours,and he was weak with hunger. The repeated drenchings in the icy water hadlikewise had their effect on him. His handsome coat was draggled. The broadpads of his feet were bruised and bleeding. He had begun to limp, and this limpincreased with the hours. To make it worse, the light of the sky was obscuredand snow began to fall—a raw, moist, melting, clinging snow, slipperyunder foot, that hid from him the landscape he traversed, and that covered overthe inequalities of the ground so that the way of his feet was more difficultand painful.

Grey Beaver had intended camping that night on the far bank of the Mackenzie,for it was in that direction that the hunting lay. But on the near bank,shortly before dark, a moose coming down to drink, had been espied byKloo-kooch, who was Grey Beaver’s squaw. Now, had not the moose come downto drink, had not Mit-sah been steering out of the course because of the snow,had not Kloo-kooch sighted the moose, and had not Grey Beaver killed it with alucky shot from his rifle, all subsequent things would have happeneddifferently. Grey Beaver would not have camped on the near side of theMackenzie, and White Fang would have passed by and gone on, either to die or tofind his way to his wild brothers and become one of them—a wolf to theend of his days.

Night had fallen. The snow was flying more thickly, and White Fang, whimperingsoftly to himself as he stumbled and limped along, came upon a fresh trail inthe snow. So fresh was it that he knew it immediately for what it was. Whiningwith eagerness, he followed back from the river bank and in among the trees.The camp-sounds came to his ears. He saw the blaze of the fire, Kloo-koochcooking, and Grey Beaver squatting on his hams and mumbling a chunk of rawtallow. There was fresh meat in camp!

White Fang expected a beating. He crouched and bristled a little at the thoughtof it. Then he went forward again. He feared and disliked the beating he knewto be waiting for him. But he knew, further, that the comfort of the fire wouldbe his, the protection of the gods, the companionship of the dogs—thelast, a companionship of enmity, but none the less a companionship andsatisfying to his gregarious needs.

He came cringing and crawling into the firelight. Grey Beaver saw him, andstopped munching the tallow. White Fang crawled slowly, cringing and grovellingin the abjectness of his abasement and submission. He crawled straight towardGrey Beaver, every inch of his progress becoming slower and more painful. Atlast he lay at the master’s feet, into whose possession he nowsurrendered himself, voluntarily, body and soul. Of his own choice, he came into sit by man’s fire and to be ruled by him. White Fang trembled, waitingfor the punishment to fall upon him. There was a movement of the hand abovehim. He cringed involuntarily under the expected blow. It did not fall. Hestole a glance upward. Grey Beaver was breaking the lump of tallow in half!Grey Beaver was offering him one piece of the tallow! Very gently and somewhatsuspiciously, he first smelled the tallow and then proceeded to eat it. GreyBeaver ordered meat to be brought to him, and guarded him from the other dogswhile he ate. After that, grateful and content, White Fang lay at GreyBeaver’s feet, gazing at the fire that warmed him, blinking and dozing,secure in the knowledge that the morrow would find him, not wandering forlornthrough bleak forest-stretches, but in the camp of the man-animals, with thegods to whom he had given himself and upon whom he was now dependent.

CHAPTER V
THE COVENANT

When December was well along, Grey Beaver went on a journey up the Mackenzie.Mit-sah and Kloo-kooch went with him. One sled he drove himself, drawn by dogshe had traded for or borrowed. A second and smaller sled was driven by Mit-sah,and to this was harnessed a team of puppies. It was more of a toy affair thananything else, yet it was the delight of Mit-sah, who felt that he wasbeginning to do a man’s work in the world. Also, he was learning to drivedogs and to train dogs; while the puppies themselves were being broken in tothe harness. Furthermore, the sled was of some service, for it carried nearlytwo hundred pounds of outfit and food.

White Fang had seen the camp-dogs toiling in the harness, so that he did notresent overmuch the first placing of the harness upon himself. About his neckwas put a moss-stuffed collar, which was connected by two pulling-traces to astrap that passed around his chest and over his back. It was to this that wasfastened the long rope by which he pulled at the sled.

There were seven puppies in the team. The others had been born earlier in theyear and were nine and ten months old, while White Fang was only eight monthsold. Each dog was fastened to the sled by a single rope. No two ropes were ofthe same length, while the difference in length between any two ropes was atleast that of a dog’s body. Every rope was brought to a ring at the frontend of the sled. The sled itself was without runners, being a birch-barktoboggan, with upturned forward end to keep it from ploughing under the snow.This construction enabled the weight of the sled and load to be distributedover the largest snow-surface; for the snow was crystal-powder and very soft.Observing the same principle of widest distribution of weight, the dogs at theends of their ropes radiated fan-fashion from the nose of the sled, so that nodog trod in another’s footsteps.

There was, furthermore, another virtue in the fan-formation. The ropes ofvarying length prevented the dogs attacking from the rear those that ran infront of them. For a dog to attack another, it would have to turn upon one at ashorter rope. In which case it would find itself face to face with the dogattacked, and also it would find itself facing the whip of the driver. But themost peculiar virtue of all lay in the fact that the dog that strove to attackone in front of him must pull the sled faster, and that the faster the sledtravelled, the faster could the dog attacked run away. Thus, the dog behindcould never catch up with the one in front. The faster he ran, the faster ranthe one he was after, and the faster ran all the dogs. Incidentally, the sledwent faster, and thus, by cunning indirection, did man increase his masteryover the beasts.

Mit-sah resembled his father, much of whose grey wisdom he possessed. In thepast he had observed Lip-lip’s persecution of White Fang; but at thattime Lip-lip was another man’s dog, and Mit-sah had never dared more thanto shy an occasional stone at him. But now Lip-lip was his dog, and heproceeded to wreak his vengeance on him by putting him at the end of thelongest rope. This made Lip-lip the leader, and was apparently an honour! butin reality it took away from him all honour, and instead of being bully andmaster of the pack, he now found himself hated and persecuted by the pack.

Because he ran at the end of the longest rope, the dogs had always the view ofhim running away before them. All that they saw of him was his bushy tail andfleeing hind legs—a view far less ferocious and intimidating than hisbristling mane and gleaming fangs. Also, dogs being so constituted in theirmental ways, the sight of him running away gave desire to run after him and afeeling that he ran away from them.

The moment the sled started, the team took after Lip-lip in a chase thatextended throughout the day. At first he had been prone to turn upon hispursuers, jealous of his dignity and wrathful; but at such times Mit-sah wouldthrow the stinging lash of the thirty-foot cariboo-gut whip into his face andcompel him to turn tail and run on. Lip-lip might face the pack, but he couldnot face that whip, and all that was left him to do was to keep his long ropetaut and his flanks ahead of the teeth of his mates.

But a still greater cunning lurked in the recesses of the Indian mind. To givepoint to unending pursuit of the leader, Mit-sah favoured him over the otherdogs. These favours aroused in them jealousy and hatred. In their presenceMit-sah would give him meat and would give it to him only. This was maddeningto them. They would rage around just outside the throwing-distance of the whip,while Lip-lip devoured the meat and Mit-sah protected him. And when there wasno meat to give, Mit-sah would keep the team at a distance and make believe togive meat to Lip-lip.

White Fang took kindly to the work. He had travelled a greater distance thanthe other dogs in the yielding of himself to the rule of the gods, and he hadlearned more thoroughly the futility of opposing their will. In addition, thepersecution he had suffered from the pack had made the pack less to him in thescheme of things, and man more. He had not learned to be dependent on his kindfor companionship. Besides, Kiche was well-nigh forgotten; and the chief outletof expression that remained to him was in the allegiance he tendered the godshe had accepted as masters. So he worked hard, learned discipline, and wasobedient. Faithfulness and willingness characterised his toil. These areessential traits of the wolf and the wild-dog when they have becomedomesticated, and these traits White Fang possessed in unusual measure.

A companionship did exist between White Fang and the other dogs, but it was oneof warfare and enmity. He had never learned to play with them. He knew only howto fight, and fight with them he did, returning to them a hundred-fold thesnaps and slashes they had given him in the days when Lip-lip was leader of thepack. But Lip-lip was no longer leader—except when he fled away beforehis mates at the end of his rope, the sled bounding along behind. In camp hekept close to Mit-sah or Grey Beaver or Kloo-kooch. He did not dare ventureaway from the gods, for now the fangs of all dogs were against him, and hetasted to the dregs the persecution that had been White Fang’s.

With the overthrow of Lip-lip, White Fang could have become leader of the pack.But he was too morose and solitary for that. He merely thrashed his team-mates.Otherwise he ignored them. They got out of his way when he came along; nor didthe boldest of them ever dare to rob him of his meat. On the contrary, theydevoured their own meat hurriedly, for fear that he would take it away fromthem. White Fang knew the law well: to oppress the weak and obey thestrong. He ate his share of meat as rapidly as he could. And then woe thedog that had not yet finished! A snarl and a flash of fangs, and that dog wouldwail his indignation to the uncomforting stars while White Fang finished hisportion for him.

Every little while, however, one dog or another would flame up in revolt and bepromptly subdued. Thus White Fang was kept in training. He was jealous of theisolation in which he kept himself in the midst of the pack, and he foughtoften to maintain it. But such fights were of brief duration. He was too quickfor the others. They were slashed open and bleeding before they knew what hadhappened, were whipped almost before they had begun to fight.

As rigid as the sled-discipline of the gods, was the discipline maintained byWhite Fang amongst his fellows. He never allowed them any latitude. Hecompelled them to an unremitting respect for him. They might do as they pleasedamongst themselves. That was no concern of his. But it was his concernthat they leave him alone in his isolation, get out of his way when he electedto walk among them, and at all times acknowledge his mastery over them. A hintof stiff-leggedness on their part, a lifted lip or a bristle of hair, and hewould be upon them, merciless and cruel, swiftly convincing them of the errorof their way.

He was a monstrous tyrant. His mastery was rigid as steel. He oppressed theweak with a vengeance. Not for nothing had he been exposed to the pitilessstruggles for life in the day of his cubhood, when his mother and he, alone andunaided, 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 wentby. He oppressed the weak, but he respected the strong. And in the course ofthe long journey with Grey Beaver he walked softly indeed amongst thefull-grown dogs in the camps of the strange man-animals they encountered.

The months passed by. Still continued the journey of Grey Beaver. WhiteFang’s strength was developed by the long hours on trail and the steadytoil at the sled; and it would have seemed that his mental development waswell-nigh complete. He had come to know quite thoroughly the world in which helived. His outlook was bleak and materialistic. The world as he saw it was afierce and brutal world, a world without warmth, a world in which caresses andaffection 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 basedupon superior intelligence and brute strength. There was something in the fibreof White Fang’s being that made his lordship a thing to be desired, elsehe 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, acaressing touch of the hand, on the part of Grey Beaver, might have soundedthese deeps; but Grey Beaver did not caress, nor speak kind words. It was nothis way. His primacy was savage, and savagely he ruled, administering justicewith a club, punishing transgression with the pain of a blow, and rewardingmerit, not by kindness, but by withholding a blow.

So White Fang knew nothing of the heaven a man’s hand might contain forhim. Besides, he did not like the hands of the man-animals. He was suspiciousof them. It was true that they sometimes gave meat, but more often they gavehurt. Hands were things to keep away from. They hurled stones, wielded sticksand 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 hehad encountered the hands of the children and learned that they were cruel tohurt. Also, he had once nearly had an eye poked out by a toddling papoose. Fromthese experiences he became suspicious of all children. He could not toleratethem. 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 resentingthe evil of the hands of the man-animals, he came to modify the law that he hadlearned from Grey Beaver: namely, that the unpardonable crime was to bite oneof 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 withan axe, and the chips were flying in the snow. White Fang, sliding by in questof meat, stopped and began to eat the chips. He observed the boy lay down theaxe and take up a stout club. White Fang sprang clear, just in time to escapethe descending blow. The boy pursued him, and he, a 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 twotepees, and this the boy guarded. Holding his club prepared to strike, he drewin on his cornered quarry. White Fang was furious. He faced the boy, bristlingand snarling, his sense of justice outraged. He knew the law of forage. All thewastage 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 givehim a beating. White Fang scarcely knew what happened. He did it in a surge ofrage. And he did it so quickly that the boy did not know either. All the boyknew 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 histeeth into the sacred flesh of one of them, and could expect nothing but a mostterrible punishment. He fled away to Grey Beaver, behind whose protecting legshe crouched when the bitten boy and the boy’s family came, demandingvengeance. But they went away with vengeance unsatisfied. Grey Beaver defendedWhite Fang. So did Mit-sah and Kloo-kooch. White Fang, listening to the wordywar and watching the angry gestures, knew that his act was justified. And so itcame that he learned there were gods and gods. There were his gods, and therewere 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 hisprivilege 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 beenbitten. With him were other boys. Hot words passed. Then all the boys attackedMit-sah. It was going hard with him. Blows were raining upon him from allsides. White Fang looked on at first. This was an affair of the gods, and noconcern of his. Then he realised that this was Mit-sah, one of his ownparticular gods, who was being maltreated. It was no reasoned impulse that madeWhite Fang do what he then did. A mad rush of anger sent him leaping in amongstthe 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 teethhad not been idle. When Mit-sah told the story in camp, Grey Beaver orderedmeat to be given to White Fang. He ordered much meat to be given, and WhiteFang, gorged and sleepy by the fire, knew that the law had received itsverification.

It was in line with these experiences that White Fang came to learn the law ofproperty and the duty of the defence of property. From the protection of hisgod’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 allthe world—even to the extent of biting other gods. Not only was such anact sacrilegious in its nature, but it was fraught with peril. The gods wereall-powerful, and a dog was no match against them; yet White Fang learned toface them, fiercely belligerent and unafraid. Duty rose above fear, andthieving gods learned to leave Grey Beaver’s property alone.

One thing, in this connection, White Fang quickly learnt, and that was that athieving god was usually a cowardly god and prone to run away at the soundingof the alarm. Also, he learned that but brief time elapsed between his soundingof the alarm and Grey Beaver coming to his aid. He came to know that it was notfear of him that drove the thief away, but fear of Grey Beaver. White Fang didnot give the alarm by barking. He never barked. His method was to drivestraight at the intruder, and to sink his teeth in if he could. Because he wasmorose and solitary, having nothing to do with the other dogs, he was unusuallyfitted to guard his master’s property; and in this he was encouraged andtrained by Grey Beaver. One result of this was to make White Fang moreferocious and indomitable, and more solitary.

The months went by, binding stronger and stronger the covenant between dog andman. This was the ancient covenant that the first wolf that came in from theWild entered into with man. And, like all succeeding wolves and wild dogs thathad done likewise, White Fang worked the covenant out for himself. The termswere simple. For the possession of a flesh-and-blood god, he exchanged his ownliberty. Food and fire, protection and companionship, were some of the thingshe received from the god. In 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 ofduty and awe, but not of love. He did not know what love was. He had noexperience of love. Kiche was a remote memory. Besides, not only had heabandoned the Wild and his kind when he gave himself up to man, but the termsof the covenant were such that if ever he met Kiche again he would not deserthis god to go with her. His allegiance to man seemed somehow a law of his beinggreater than the love of liberty, of kind and kin.

CHAPTER VI
THE FAMINE

The spring of the year was at hand when Grey Beaver finished his long journey.It was April, and White Fang was a year old when he pulled into the homevillages and was loosed from the harness by Mit-sah. Though a long way from hisfull growth, White Fang, next to Lip-lip, was the largest yearling in thevillage. Both from his father, the wolf, and from Kiche, he had inheritedstature and strength, and already he was measuring up alongside the full-growndogs. But he had not yet grown compact. His body was slender and rangy, and hisstrength more stringy than massive, His coat was the true wolf-grey, and to allappearances he was true wolf himself. The quarter-strain of dog he hadinherited from Kiche had left no mark on him physically, though it had playedits part in his mental make-up.

He wandered through the village, recognising with staid satisfaction thevarious gods he had known before the long journey. Then there were the dogs,puppies growing up like himself, and grown dogs that did not look so large andformidable as the memory pictures he retained of them. Also, he stood less infear of them than formerly, stalking among them with a certain careless easethat was as new to him as it was enjoyable.

There was Baseek, a grizzled old fellow that in his younger days had but touncover his fangs to send White Fang cringing and crouching to the right about.From him White Fang had learned much of his own insignificance; and from him hewas now to learn much of the change and development that had taken place inhimself. While Baseek had been growing weaker with age, White Fang had beengrowing stronger with youth.

It was at the cutting-up of a moose, fresh-killed, that White Fang learned ofthe changed relations in which he stood to the dog-world. He had got forhimself a hoof and part of the shin-bone, to which quite a bit of meat wasattached. Withdrawn from the immediate scramble of the other dogs—in factout of sight behind a thicket—he was devouring his prize, when Baseekrushed in upon him. Before he knew what he was doing, he had slashed theintruder twice and sprung clear. Baseek was surprised by the other’stemerity and swiftness of attack. He stood, gazing stupidly across at WhiteFang, the raw, red shin-bone between them.

Baseek was old, and already he had come to know the increasing valour of thedogs it had been his wont to bully. Bitter experiences these, which, perforce,he swallowed, calling upon all his wisdom to cope with them. In the old days hewould have sprung upon White Fang in a fury of righteous wrath. But now hiswaning powers would not permit such a course. He bristled fiercely and lookedominously across the shin-bone at White Fang. And White Fang, resurrectingquite a deal of the old awe, seemed to wilt and to shrink in upon himself andgrow small, as he cast about in his mind for a way to beat a retreat not tooinglorious.

And right here Baseek erred. Had he contented himself with looking fierce andominous, all would have been well. White Fang, on the verge of retreat, wouldhave retreated, leaving the meat to him. But Baseek did not wait. He consideredthe victory already his and stepped forward to the meat. As he bent his headcarelessly to smell it, White Fang bristled slightly. Even then it was not toolate for Baseek to retrieve the situation. Had he merely stood over the meat,head up and glowering, White Fang would ultimately have slunk away. But thefresh meat was strong in Baseek’s nostrils, and greed urged him to take abite of it.

This was too much for White Fang. Fresh upon his months of mastery over his ownteam-mates, it was beyond his self-control to stand idly by while anotherdevoured the meat that belonged to him. He struck, after his custom, withoutwarning. With the first slash, Baseek’s right ear was ripped intoribbons. He was astounded at the suddenness of it. But more things, and mostgrievous ones, were happening with equal suddenness. He was knocked off hisfeet. His throat was bitten. While he was struggling to his feet the young dogsank teeth twice into his shoulder. The swiftness of it was bewildering. Hemade a futile rush at White Fang, clipping the empty air with an outraged snap.The next moment his nose was laid open, and he was staggering backward awayfrom the meat.

The situation was now reversed. White Fang stood over the shin-bone, bristlingand menacing, while Baseek stood a little way off, preparing to retreat. Hedared not risk a fight with this young lightning-flash, and again he knew, andmore bitterly, the enfeeblement of oncoming age. His attempt to maintain hisdignity was heroic. Calmly turning his back upon young dog and shin-bone, asthough both were beneath his notice and unworthy of his consideration, hestalked grandly away. Nor, until well out of sight, did he stop to lick hisbleeding wounds.

The effect on White Fang was to give him a greater faith in himself, and agreater pride. He walked less softly among the grown dogs; his attitude towardthem was less compromising. Not that he went out of his way looking fortrouble. Far from it. But upon his way he demanded consideration. He stood uponhis right to go his way unmolested and to give trail to no dog. He had to betaken into account, that was all. He was no longer to be disregarded andignored, as was the lot of puppies, and as continued to be the lot of thepuppies that were his team-mates. They got out of the way, gave trail to thegrown dogs, and gave up meat to them under compulsion. But White Fang,uncompanionable, solitary, morose, scarcely looking to right or left,redoubtable, forbidding of aspect, remote and alien, was accepted as an equalby his puzzled elders. They quickly learned to leave him alone, neitherventuring hostile acts nor making overtures of friendliness. If they left himalone, he left them alone—a state of affairs that they found, after a fewencounters, to be pre-eminently desirable.

In midsummer White Fang had an experience. Trotting along in his silent way toinvestigate a new tepee which had been erected on the edge of the village whilehe was away with the hunters after moose, he came full upon Kiche. He pausedand looked at her. He remembered her vaguely, but he remembered her, andthat was more than could be said for her. She lifted her lip at him in the oldsnarl of menace, and his memory became clear. His forgotten cubhood, all thatwas associated with that familiar snarl, rushed back to him. Before he hadknown the gods, she had been to him the centre-pin of the universe. The oldfamiliar feelings of that time came back upon him, surged up within him. Hebounded towards her joyously, and she met him with shrewd fangs that laid hischeek open to the bone. He did not understand. He backed away, bewildered andpuzzled.

But it was not Kiche’s fault. A wolf-mother was not made to remember hercubs of a year or so before. So she did not remember White Fang. He was astrange animal, an intruder; and her present litter of puppies gave her theright to resent such intrusion.

One of the puppies sprawled up to White Fang. They were half-brothers, onlythey did not know it. White Fang sniffed the puppy curiously, whereupon Kicherushed upon him, gashing his face a second time. He backed farther away. Allthe old memories and associations died down again and passed into the gravefrom which they had been resurrected. He looked at Kiche licking her puppy andstopping now and then to snarl at him. She was without value to him. He hadlearned to get along without her. Her meaning was forgotten. There was no placefor 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, wonderingwhat it was all about, when Kiche attacked him a third time, intent on drivinghim away altogether from the vicinity. And White Fang allowed himself to bedriven away. This was a female of his kind, and it was a law of his kind thatthe 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 byexperience of the world. He knew it as a secret prompting, as an urge ofinstinct—of the same instinct that made him howl at the moon and stars ofnights, and that made him fear death and the unknown.

The months went by. White Fang grew stronger, heavier, and more compact, whilehis character was developing along the lines laid down by his heredity and hisenvironment. His heredity was a life-stuff that may be likened to clay. Itpossessed many possibilities, was capable of being moulded into many differentforms. 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 havemoulded him into a true wolf. But the gods had given him a differentenvironment, and he was moulded into a dog that was rather wolfish, but thatwas a dog and not a wolf.

And so, according to the clay of his nature and the pressure of hissurroundings, 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 thatit was better to be at peace with him than at war, and Grey Beaver was comingto prize him more greatly with the passage of each day.

White Fang, seeming to sum up strength in all his qualities, neverthelesssuffered from one besetting weakness. He could not stand being laughed at. Thelaughter of men was a hateful thing. They might laugh among themselves aboutanything they pleased except himself, and he did not mind. But the momentlaughter was turned upon him he would fly into a most terrible rage. Grave,dignified, sombre, a laugh made him frantic to ridiculousness. It so outragedhim and upset him that for hours he would behave like a demon. And woe to thedog that at such times ran foul of him. He knew the law too well to take it outon Grey Beaver; behind Grey Beaver were a club and godhead. But behind the dogsthere was nothing but space, and into this space they flew when White Fang cameon the scene, made mad by laughter.

In the third year of his life there came a great famine to the MackenzieIndians. In the summer the fish failed. In the winter the cariboo forsook theiraccustomed track. Moose were scarce, the rabbits almost disappeared, huntingand preying animals perished. Denied their usual food-supply, weakened byhunger, they fell upon and devoured one another. Only the strong survived.White Fang’s gods were always hunting animals. The old and the weak ofthem died of hunger. There was wailing in the village, where the women andchildren went without in order that what little they had might go into thebellies of the lean and hollow-eyed hunters who trod the forest in the vainpursuit of meat.

To such extremity were the gods driven that they ate the soft-tanned leather oftheir mocassins and mittens, while the dogs ate the harnesses off their backsand the very whip-lashes. Also, the dogs ate one another, and also the gods atethe dogs. The weakest and the more worthless were eaten first. The dogs thatstill lived, looked on and understood. A few of the boldest and wisest forsookthe fires of the gods, which had now become a shambles, and fled into theforest, 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 wasbetter fitted for the life than the other dogs, for he had the training of hiscubhood to guide him. Especially adept did he become in stalking small livingthings. He would lie concealed for hours, following every movement of acautious tree-squirrel, waiting, with a patience as huge as the hunger hesuffered from, until the squirrel ventured out upon the ground. Even then,White Fang was not premature. He waited until he was sure of striking beforethe squirrel could gain a tree-refuge. Then, and not until then, would he flashfrom his hiding-place, a grey projectile, incredibly swift, never failing itsmark—the fleeing squirrel that fled not fast enough.

Successful as he was with squirrels, there was one difficulty that preventedhim from living and growing fat on them. There were not enough squirrels. So hewas driven to hunt still smaller things. So acute did his hunger become attimes that he was not above rooting out wood-mice from their burrows in theground. Nor did he scorn to do battle with a weasel as hungry as himself andmany times more ferocious.

In the worst pinches of the famine he stole back to the fires of the gods. Buthe did not go into the fires. He lurked in the forest, avoiding discovery androbbing the snares at the rare intervals when game was caught. He even robbedGrey Beaver’s snare of a rabbit at a time when Grey Beaver staggered andtottered through the forest, sitting down often to rest, what of weakness andof shortness of breath.

One day White Fang encountered a young wolf, gaunt and scrawny, loose-jointedwith famine. Had he not been hungry himself, White Fang might have gone withhim and eventually found his way into the pack amongst his wild brethren. As itwas, he ran the young wolf down and killed and ate him.

Fortune seemed to favour him. Always, when hardest pressed for food, he foundsomething to kill. Again, when he was weak, it was his luck that none of thelarger preying animals chanced upon him. Thus, he was strong from the twodays’ eating a lynx had afforded him when the hungry wolf-pack ran fulltilt upon him. It was a long, cruel chase, but he was better nourished thanthey, 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 exhaustedpursuers.

After that he left that part of the country and journeyed over to the valleywherein he had been born. Here, in the old lair, he encountered Kiche. Up toher old tricks, she, too, had fled the inhospitable fires of the gods and goneback to her old refuge to give birth to her young. Of this litter but oneremained alive when White Fang came upon the scene, and this one was notdestined to live long. Young life had little chance in such a famine.

Kiche’s greeting of her grown son was anything but affectionate. ButWhite Fang did not mind. He had outgrown his mother. So he turned tailphilosophically and trotted on up the stream. At the forks he took the turningto the left, where he found the lair of the lynx with whom his mother and hehad fought long before. Here, in the abandoned lair, he settled down and restedfor a day.

During the early summer, in the last days of the famine, he met Lip-lip, whohad likewise taken to the woods, where he had eked out a miserable existence.

White Fang came upon him unexpectedly. Trotting in opposite directions alongthe base of a high bluff, they rounded a corner of rock and found themselvesface to face. They paused with instant alarm, and looked at each othersuspiciously.

White Fang was in splendid condition. His hunting had been good, and for a weekhe had eaten his fill. He was even gorged from his latest kill. But in themoment he looked at Lip-lip his hair rose on end all along his back. It was aninvoluntary bristling on his part, the physical state that in the past hadalways accompanied the mental state produced in him by Lip-lip’s bullyingand persecution. As in the past he had bristled and snarled at sight ofLip-lip, so now, and automatically, he bristled and snarled. He did not wasteany time. The thing was done thoroughly and with despatch. Lip-lip essayed toback away, but White Fang struck him hard, shoulder to shoulder. Lip-lip wasoverthrown and rolled upon his back. White Fang’s teeth drove into thescrawny throat. There was a death-struggle, during which White Fang walkedaround, stiff-legged and observant. Then he resumed his course and trotted onalong the base of the bluff.

One day, not long after, he came to the edge of the forest, where a narrowstretch of open land sloped down to the Mackenzie. He had been over this groundbefore, when it was bare, but now a village occupied it. Still hidden amongstthe trees, he paused to study the situation. Sights and sounds and scents werefamiliar to him. It was the old village changed to a new place. But sights andsounds and smells were different from those he had last had when he fled awayfrom 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 thatproceeds from a full stomach. And there was a smell in the air of fish. Therewas food. The famine was gone. He came out boldly from the forest and trottedinto camp straight to Grey Beaver’s tepee. Grey Beaver was not there; butKloo-kooch welcomed him with glad cries and the whole of a fresh-caught fish,and he lay down to wait Grey Beaver’s coming.

PART IV

CHAPTER I
THE ENEMY OF HIS KIND

Had there been in White Fang’s nature any possibility, no matter howremote, of his ever coming to fraternise with his kind, such possibility wasirretrievably destroyed when he was made leader of the sled-team. For now thedogs 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 thathe fled always at the head of the team, his waving brush of a tail and hisperpetually retreating hind-quarters for ever maddening their eyes.

And White Fang just as bitterly hated them back. Being sled-leader was anythingbut 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 almostmore than he could endure. But endure it he must, or perish, and the life thatwas in him had no desire to perish out. The moment Mit-sah gave his order forthe start, that moment the whole team, with eager, savage cries, sprang forwardat White Fang.

There was no defence for him. If he turned upon them, Mit-sah would throw thestinging lash of the whip into his face. Only remained to him to run away. Hecould not encounter that howling horde with his tail and hind-quarters. Thesewere scarcely fit weapons with which to meet the many merciless fangs. So runaway he did, violating his own nature and pride with every leap he made, andleaping all day long.

One cannot violate the promptings of one’s nature without having thatnature recoil upon itself. Such a recoil is like that of a hair, made to growout from the body, turning unnaturally upon the direction of its growth andgrowing into the body—a rankling, festering thing of hurt. And so withWhite Fang. Every urge of his being impelled him to spring upon the pack thatcried 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 bitingthirty-foot lash. So White Fang could only eat his heart in bitterness anddevelop a hatred and malice commensurate with the ferocity and indomitabilityof his nature.

If ever a creature was the enemy of its kind, White Fang was that creature. Heasked no quarter, gave none. He was continually marred and scarred by the teethof the pack, and as continually he left his own marks upon the pack. Unlikemost leaders, who, when camp was made and the dogs were unhitched, huddled nearto the gods for protection, White Fang disdained such protection. He walkedboldly about the camp, inflicting punishment in the night for what he hadsuffered in the day. In the time before he was made leader of the team, thepack had learned to get out of his way. But now it was different. Excited bythe day-long pursuit of him, swayed subconsciously by the insistent iterationon their brains of the sight of him fleeing away, mastered by the feeling ofmastery enjoyed all day, the dogs could not bring themselves to give way tohim. When he appeared amongst them, there was always a squabble. His progresswas marked by snarl and snap and growl. The very atmosphere he breathed wassurcharged with hatred and malice, and this but served to increase the hatredand malice within him.

When Mit-sah cried out his command for the team to stop, White Fang obeyed. Atfirst this caused trouble for the other dogs. All of them would spring upon thehated leader only to find the tables turned. Behind him would be Mit-sah, thegreat whip singing in his hand. So the dogs came to understand that when theteam stopped by order, White Fang was to be let alone. But when White Fangstopped without orders, then it was allowed them to spring upon him and destroyhim if they could. After several experiences, White Fang never stopped withoutorders. He learned quickly. It was in the nature of things, that he must learnquickly if he were to survive the unusually severe conditions under which lifewas 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 waserased, and that night would have to be learned over again, to be asimmediately forgotten. Besides, there was a greater consistence in theirdislike of him. They sensed between themselves and him a difference ofkind—cause sufficient in itself for hostility. Like him, they weredomesticated wolves. But they had been domesticated for generations. Much ofthe 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 andimpulse, still clung the Wild. He symbolised it, was its personification: sothat when they showed their teeth to him they were defending themselves againstthe powers of destruction that lurked in the shadows of the forest and in thedark 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 himwith the mass-formation, otherwise he would have killed them, one by one, in anight. As it was, he never had a chance to kill them. He might roll a dog offits feet, but the pack would be upon him before he could follow up and deliverthe deadly throat-stroke. At the first hint of conflict, the whole team drewtogether and faced him. The dogs had quarrels among themselves, but these wereforgotten when trouble was brewing with White Fang.

On the other hand, try as they would, they could not kill White Fang. He wastoo quick for them, too formidable, too wise. He avoided tight places andalways backed out of it when they bade fair to surround him. While, as forgetting him off his feet, there was no dog among them capable of doing thetrick. His feet clung to the earth with the same tenacity that he clung tolife. For that matter, life and footing were synonymous in this unendingwarfare 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’sstrength. 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 thisvendetta that Grey Beaver, fierce savage himself, could not but marvel at WhiteFang’s ferocity. Never, he swore, had there been the like of this animal;and the Indians in strange villages swore likewise when they considered thetale of his killings amongst their dogs.

When White Fang was nearly five years old, Grey Beaver took him on anothergreat journey, and long remembered was the havoc he worked amongst the dogs ofthe many villages along the Mackenzie, across the Rockies, and down thePorcupine to the Yukon. He revelled in the vengeance he wreaked upon his kind.They were ordinary, unsuspecting dogs. They were not prepared for his swiftnessand directness, for his attack without warning. They did not know him for whathe was, a lightning-flash of slaughter. They bristled up to him, stiff-leggedand challenging, while he, wasting no time on elaborate preliminaries, snappinginto action like a steel spring, was at their throats and destroying thembefore they knew what was happening and while they were yet in the throes ofsurprise.

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 againtoo quickly. The dislike of the wolf for close quarters was his to an unusualdegree. He could not endure a prolonged contact with another body. It smackedof 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, assertingitself through him. This feeling had been accentuated by the Ishmaelite life hehad led from his puppyhood. Danger lurked in contacts. It was the trap, everthe trap, the fear of it lurking deep in the life of him, woven into the fibreof him.

In consequence, the strange dogs he encountered had no chance against him. Heeluded their fangs. He got them, or got away, himself untouched in eitherevent. In the natural course of things there were exceptions to this. Therewere times when several dogs, pitching on to him, punished him before he couldget away; and there were times when a single dog scored deeply on him. Butthese were accidents. In the main, so efficient a fighter had he become, hewent 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. Itwas all automatic. His eyes saw correctly, and the nerves carried the visioncorrectly to his brain. The parts of him were better adjusted than those of theaverage dog. They worked together more smoothly and steadily. His was a better,far better, nervous, mental, and muscular co-ordination. When his eyes conveyedto his brain the moving image of an action, his brain without conscious effort,knew the space that limited that action and the time required for itscompletion. Thus, he could avoid the leap of another dog, or the drive of itsfangs, and at the same moment could seize the infinitesimal fraction of time inwhich to deliver his own attack. Body and brain, his was a more perfectedmechanism. Not that he was to be praised for it. Nature had been more generousto him than to the average animal, that was all.

It was in the summer that White Fang arrived at Fort Yukon. Grey Beaver hadcrossed the great watershed between Mackenzie and the Yukon in the late winter,and spent the spring in hunting among the western outlying spurs of theRockies. Then, after the break-up of the ice on the Porcupine, he had built acanoe and paddled down that stream to where it effected its junction with theYukon just under the Artic circle. Here stood the old Hudson’s BayCompany fort; and here were many Indians, much food, and unprecedentedexcitement. It was the summer of 1898, and thousands of gold-hunters were goingup the Yukon to Dawson and the Klondike. Still hundreds of miles from theirgoal, nevertheless many of them had been on the way for a year, and the leastany of them had travelled to get that far was five thousand miles, while somehad come from the other side of the world.

Here Grey Beaver stopped. A whisper of the gold-rush had reached his ears, andhe had come with several bales of furs, and another of gut-sewn mittens andmoccasins. He would not have ventured so long a trip had he not expectedgenerous profits. But what he had expected was nothing to what he realised. Hiswildest dreams had not exceeded a hundred per cent. profit; he made a thousandper cent. And like a true Indian, he settled down to trade carefully andslowly, even if it took all summer and the rest of the winter to dispose of hisgoods.

It was at Fort Yukon that White Fang saw his first white men. As compared withthe Indians he had known, they were to him another race of beings, a race ofsuperior gods. They impressed him as possessing superior power, and it is onpower that godhead rests. White Fang did not reason it out, did not in his mindmake the sharp generalisation that the white gods were more powerful. It was afeeling, nothing more, and yet none the less potent. As, in his puppyhood, thelooming bulks of the tepees, man-reared, had affected him as manifestations ofpower, so was he affected now by the houses and the huge fort all of massivelogs. Here was power. Those white gods were strong. They possessed greatermastery over matter than the gods he had known, most powerful among which wasGrey Beaver. And yet Grey Beaver was as a child-god among these white-skinnedones.

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 everyact White Fang now performed was based upon the feeling that the white men werethe superior gods. In the first place he was very suspicious of them. There wasno telling what unknown terrors were theirs, what unknown hurts they couldadminister. 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 themfrom a safe distance. Then he saw that no harm befell the dogs that were nearto them, and he came in closer.

In turn he was an object of great curiosity to them. His wolfish appearancecaught their eyes at once, and they pointed him out to one another. This act ofpointing put White Fang on his guard, and when they tried to approach him heshowed 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 adozen—lived at this place. Every two or three days a steamer (another andcolossal manifestation of power) came into the bank and stopped for severalhours. 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 sawmore of them than he had seen Indians in all his life; and as the days went bythey continued to come up the river, stop, and then go on up the river out ofsight.

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 withtheir masters. They were irregular shapes and sizes. Some wereshort-legged—too short; others were long-legged—too long. They hadhair instead of fur, and a few had very little hair at that. And none of themknew how to fight.

As an enemy of his kind, it was in White Fang’s province to fight withthem. This he did, and he quickly achieved for them a mighty contempt. Theywere soft and helpless, made much noise, and floundered around clumsily tryingto 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 hadbecome of him; and in that moment he struck them on the shoulder, rolling themoff their feet and delivering his stroke at the throat.

Sometimes this stroke was successful, and a stricken dog rolled in the dirt, tobe 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 angrywhen their dogs were killed. The white men were no exception to this. So he wascontent, when he had overthrown and slashed wide the throat of one of theirdogs, to drop back and let the pack go in and do the cruel finishing work. Itwas then that the white men rushed in, visiting their wrath heavily on thepack, while White Fang went free. He would stand off at a little distance andlook on, while stones, clubs, axes, and all sorts of weapons fell upon hisfellows. White Fang was very wise.

But his fellows grew wise in their own way; and in this White Fang grew wisewith them. They learned that it was when a steamer first tied to the bank thatthey had their fun. After the first two or three strange dogs had been downedand destroyed, the white men hustled their own animals back on board andwrecked 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 ofpower that sank deep into White Fang’s consciousness.

White Fang enjoyed it all. He did not love his kind, and he was shrewd enoughto escape hurt himself. At first, the killing of the white men’s dogs hadbeen a diversion. After a time it became his occupation. There was no work forhim to do. Grey Beaver was busy trading and getting wealthy. So White Fang hungaround the landing with the disreputable gang of Indian dogs, waiting forsteamers. With the arrival of a steamer the fun began. After a few minutes, bythe time the white men had got over their surprise, the gang scattered. The funwas over until the next steamer should arrive.

But it can scarcely be said that White Fang was a member of the gang. He didnot mingle with it, but remained aloof, always himself, and was even feared byit. It is true, he worked with it. He picked the quarrel with the strange dogwhile the gang waited. And when he had overthrown the strange dog the gang wentin to finish it. But it is equally true that he then withdrew, leaving the gangto receive the punishment of the outraged gods.

It did not require much exertion to pick these quarrels. All he had to do, whenthe strange dogs came ashore, was to show himself. When they saw him theyrushed for him. It was their instinct. He was the Wild—the unknown, theterrible, the ever-menacing, the thing that prowled in the darkness around thefires of the primeval world when they, cowering close to the fires, werereshaping their instincts, learning to fear the Wild out of which they hadcome, and which they had deserted and betrayed. Generation by generation, downall 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 allthis time free licence had been theirs, from their masters, to kill the thingsof the Wild. In doing this they had protected both themselves and the godswhose companionship they shared.

And so, fresh from the soft southern world, these dogs, trotting down thegang-plank and out upon the Yukon shore had but to see White Fang to experiencethe irresistible impulse to rush upon him and destroy him. They might betown-reared dogs, but the instinctive fear of the Wild was theirs just thesame. Not alone with their own eyes did they see the wolfish creature in theclear light of day, standing before them. They saw him with the eyes of theirancestors, and by their inherited memory they knew White Fang for the wolf, andthey remembered the ancient feud.

All of which served to make White Fang’s days enjoyable. If the sight ofhim drove these strange dogs upon him, so much the better for him, so much theworse for them. They looked upon him as legitimate prey, and as legitimate preyhe looked upon them.

Not for nothing had he first seen the light of day in a lonely lair and foughthis first fights with the ptarmigan, the weasel, and the lynx. And not fornothing had his puppyhood been made bitter by the persecution of Lip-lip andthe whole puppy pack. It might have been otherwise, and he would then have beenotherwise. Had Lip-lip not existed, he would have passed his puppyhood with theother puppies and grown up more doglike and with more liking for dogs. Had GreyBeaver possessed the plummet of affection and love, he might have sounded thedeeps of White Fang’s nature and brought up to the surface all manner ofkindly qualities. But these things had not been so. The clay of White Fang hadbeen moulded until he became what he was, morose and lonely, unloving andferocious, the enemy of all his kind.

CHAPTER II
THE MAD GOD

A small number of white men lived in Fort Yukon. These men had been long in thecountry. They called themselves Sour-doughs, and took great pride in soclassifying themselves. For other men, new in the land, they felt nothing butdisdain. The men who came ashore from the steamers were newcomers. They wereknown as chechaquos, and they always wilted at the application of thename. They made their bread with baking-powder. This was the invidiousdistinction between them and the Sour-doughs, who, forsooth, made their breadfrom sour-dough because they had no baking-powder.

All of which is neither here nor there. The men in the fort disdained thenewcomers and enjoyed seeing them come to grief. Especially did they enjoy thehavoc worked amongst the newcomers’ dogs by White Fang and hisdisreputable gang. When a steamer arrived, the men of the fort made it a pointalways to come down to the bank and see the fun. They looked forward to it withas much anticipation as did the Indian dogs, while they were not slow toappreciate the savage and crafty part played by White Fang.

But there was one man amongst them who particularly enjoyed the sport. He wouldcome running at the first sound of a steamboat’s whistle; and when thelast fight was over and White Fang and the pack had scattered, he would returnslowly to the fort, his face heavy with regret. Sometimes, when a softsouthland 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 andcry out with delight. And always he had a sharp and covetous eye for WhiteFang.

This man was called “Beauty” by the other men of the fort. No oneknew his first name, and in general he was known in the country as BeautySmith. But he was anything save a beauty. To antithesis was due his naming. Hewas pre-eminently unbeautiful. Nature had been niggardly with him. He was asmall man to begin with; and upon his meagre frame was deposited an even morestrikingly meagre head. Its apex might be likened to a point. In fact, in hisboyhood, 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 itslanted uncompromisingly to meet a low and remarkably wide forehead. Beginninghere, as though regretting her parsimony, Nature had spread his features with alavish hand. His eyes were large, and between them was the distance of twoeyes. His face, in relation to the rest of him, was prodigious. In order todiscover 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 reston his chest. Possibly this appearance was due to the weariness of the slenderneck, 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 wasa lie. Beauty Smith was known far and wide as the weakest of weak-kneed andsnivelling cowards. To complete his description, his teeth were large andyellow, while the two eye-teeth, larger than their fellows, showed under hislean lips like fangs. His eyes were yellow and muddy, as though Nature had runshort on pigments and squeezed together the dregs of all her tubes. It was thesame with his hair, sparse and irregular of growth, muddy-yellow anddirty-yellow, rising on his head and sprouting out of his face in unexpectedtufts and bunches, in appearance like clumped and wind-blown grain.

In short, Beauty Smith was a monstrosity, and the blame of it lay elsewhere. Hewas not responsible. The clay of him had been so moulded in the making. He didthe 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, asone 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 theircoffee. But somebody had to do the cooking, and whatever else his shortcomings,Beauty Smith could cook.

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 moreinsistent, White Fang bristled and bared his teeth and backed away. He did notlike the man. The feel of him was bad. He sensed the evil in him, and fearedthe 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 goodstands for all things that bring easement and satisfaction and surcease frompain. Therefore, the good is liked. The bad stands for all things that arefraught with discomfort, menace, and hurt, and is hated accordingly. WhiteFang’s feel of Beauty Smith was bad. From the man’s distorted bodyand twisted mind, in occult ways, like mists rising from malarial marshes, cameemanations of the unhealth within. Not by reasoning, not by the five sensesalone, but by other and remoter and uncharted senses, came the feeling to WhiteFang that the man was ominous with evil, pregnant with hurtfulness, andtherefore 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 Fangknew who was coming and began to bristle. He had been lying down in an abandonof comfort, but he arose quickly, and, as the man arrived, slid away in truewolf-fashion to the edge of the camp. He did not know what they said, but hecould see the man and Grey Beaver talking together. Once, the man pointed athim, and White Fang snarled back as though the hand were just descending uponhim instead of being, as it was, fifty feet away. The man laughed at this; andWhite Fang slunk away to the sheltering woods, his head turned to observe as heglided softly over the ground.

Grey Beaver refused to sell the dog. He had grown rich with his trading andstood in need of nothing. Besides, White Fang was a valuable animal, thestrongest sled-dog he had ever owned, and the best leader. Furthermore, therewas no dog like him on the Mackenzie nor the Yukon. He could fight. He killedother dogs as easily as men killed mosquitoes. (Beauty Smith’s eyeslighted 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 campoften, and hidden under his coat was always a black bottle or so. One of thepotencies of whisky is the breeding of thirst. Grey Beaver got the thirst. Hisfevered membranes and burnt stomach began to clamour for more and more of thescorching 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 hisfurs and mittens and moccasins began to go. It went faster and faster, and theshorter his money-sack grew, the shorter grew his temper.

In the end his money and goods and temper were all gone. Nothing remained tohim but his thirst, a prodigious possession in itself that grew more prodigiouswith every sober breath he drew. Then it was that Beauty Smith had talk withhim again about the sale of White Fang; but this time the price offered was inbottles, 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 tolay hands on him had been growing more insistent, and during that time WhiteFang had been compelled to avoid the camp. He did not know what evil wasthreatened by those insistent hands. He knew only that they did threaten evilof 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 aleather thong around his neck. He sat down beside White Fang, holding the endof the thong in his hand. In the other hand he held a bottle, which, from timeto time, was inverted above his head to the accompaniment of gurgling noises.

An hour of this passed, when the vibrations of feet in contact with the groundforeran the one who approached. White Fang heard it first, and he was bristlingwith recognition while Grey Beaver still nodded stupidly. White Fang tried todraw the thong softly out of his master’s hand; but the relaxed fingersclosed tightly and Grey Beaver roused himself.

Beauty Smith strode into camp and stood over White Fang. He snarled softly upat the thing of fear, watching keenly the deportment of the hands. One handextended outward and began to descend upon his head. His soft snarl grew tenseand harsh. The hand continued slowly to descend, while he crouched beneath it,eyeing it malignantly, his snarl growing shorter and shorter as, withquickening breath, it approached its culmination. Suddenly he snapped, strikingwith his fangs like a snake. The hand was jerked back, and the teeth cametogether emptily with a sharp click. Beauty Smith was frightened and angry.Grey Beaver clouted White Fang alongside the head, so that he cowered downclose to the earth in respectful obedience.

White Fang’s suspicious eyes followed every movement. He saw Beauty Smithgo away and return with a stout club. Then the end of the thong was given overto 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 getup and follow. He obeyed, but with a rush, hurling himself upon the strangerwho was dragging him away. Beauty Smith did not jump away. He had been waitingfor this. He swung the club smartly, stopping the rush midway and smashingWhite Fang down upon the ground. Grey Beaver laughed and nodded approval.Beauty Smith tightened the thong again, and White Fang crawled limply anddizzily to his feet.

He did not rush a second time. One smash from the club was sufficient toconvince him that the white god knew how to handle it, and he was too wise tofight the inevitable. So he followed morosely at Beauty Smith’s heels,his tail between his legs, yet snarling softly under his breath. But BeautySmith kept a wary eye on him, and the club was held always ready to strike.

At the fort Beauty Smith left him securely tied and went in to bed. White Fangwaited an hour. Then he applied his teeth to the thong, and in the space of tenseconds was free. He had wasted no time with his teeth. There had been nouseless gnawing. The thong was cut across, diagonally, almost as clean asthough done by a knife. White Fang looked up at the fort, at the same timebristling and growling. Then he turned and trotted back to Grey Beaver’scamp. He owed no allegiance to this strange and terrible god. He had givenhimself to Grey Beaver, and to Grey Beaver he considered he still belonged.

But what had occurred before was repeated—with a difference. Grey Beaveragain made him fast with a thong, and in the morning turned him over to BeautySmith. And here was where the difference came in. Beauty Smith gave him abeating. Tied securely, White Fang could only rage futilely and endure thepunishment. Club and whip were both used upon him, and he experienced the worstbeating he had ever received in his life. Even the big beating given him in hispuppyhood 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 WhiteFang’s cries of pain and to his helpless bellows and snarls. For BeautySmith was cruel in the way that cowards are cruel. Cringing and snivellinghimself before the blows or angry speech of a man, he revenged himself, inturn, upon creatures weaker than he. All life likes power, and Beauty Smith wasno exception. Denied the expression of power amongst his own kind, he fell backupon the lesser creatures and there vindicated the life that was in him. ButBeauty 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. Thishad constituted the clay of him, and it had not been kindly moulded by theworld.

White Fang knew why he was being beaten. When Grey Beaver tied the thong aroundhis 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 BeautySmith. And when Beauty Smith left him tied outside the fort, he knew that itwas Beauty Smith’s will that he should remain there. Therefore, he haddisobeyed the will of both the gods, and earned the consequent punishment. Hehad seen dogs change owners in the past, and he had seen the runaways beaten ashe was being beaten. He was wise, and yet in the nature of him there wereforces greater than wisdom. One of these was fidelity. He did not love GreyBeaver, yet, even in the face of his will and his anger, he was faithful tohim. He could not help it. This faithfulness was a quality of the clay thatcomposed him. It was the quality that was peculiarly the possession of hiskind; the quality that set apart his species from all other species; thequality that has enabled the wolf and the wild dog to come in from the open andbe the companions of man.

After the beating, White Fang was dragged back to the fort. But this timeBeauty Smith left him tied with a stick. One does not give up a god easily, andso with White Fang. Grey Beaver was his own particular god, and, in spite ofGrey Beaver’s will, White Fang still clung to him and would not give himup. 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. Therehad been no reservation on White Fang’s part, and the bond was not to bebroken easily.

So, in the night, when the men in the fort were asleep, White Fang applied histeeth to the stick that held him. The wood was seasoned and dry, and it wastied so closely to his neck that he could scarcely get his teeth to it. It wasonly by the severest muscular exertion and neck-arching that he succeeded ingetting the wood between his teeth, and barely between his teeth at that; andit was only by the exercise of an immense patience, extending through manyhours, that he succeeded in gnawing through the stick. This was something thatdogs 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 stickhanging to his neck.

He was wise. But had he been merely wise he would not have gone back to GreyBeaver who had already twice betrayed him. But there was his faithfulness, andhe went back to be betrayed yet a third time. Again he yielded to the tying ofa thong around his neck by Grey Beaver, and again Beauty Smith came to claimhim. And this time he was beaten even more severely than before.

Grey Beaver looked on stolidly while the white man wielded the whip. He gave noprotection. It was no longer his dog. When the beating was over White Fang wassick. A soft southland dog would have died under it, but not he. His school oflife had been sterner, and he was himself of sterner stuff. He had too greatvitality. His clutch on life was too strong. But he was very sick. At first hewas unable to drag himself along, and Beauty Smith had to wait half-an-hour forhim. And then, blind and reeling, he followed at Beauty Smith’s heelsback 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. Aftera few days, sober and bankrupt, Grey Beaver departed up the Porcupine on hislong journey to the Mackenzie. White Fang remained on the Yukon, the propertyof a man more than half mad and all brute. But what is a dog to know in itsconsciousness of madness? To White Fang, Beauty Smith was a veritable, ifterrible, god. He was a mad god at best, but White Fang knew nothing ofmadness; he knew only that he must submit to the will of this new master, obeyhis every whim and fancy.

CHAPTER III
THE REIGN OF HATE

Under the tutelage of the mad god, White Fang became a fiend. He was keptchained in a pen at the rear of the fort, and here Beauty Smith teased andirritated and drove him wild with petty torments. The man early discoveredWhite Fang’s susceptibility to laughter, and made it a point afterpainfully tricking him, to laugh at him. This laughter was uproarious andscornful, and at the same time the god pointed his finger derisively at WhiteFang. At such times reason fled from White Fang, and in his transports of ragehe was even more mad than Beauty Smith.

Formerly, White Fang had been merely the enemy of his kind, withal a ferociousenemy. He now became the enemy of all things, and more ferocious than ever. Tosuch an extent was he tormented, that he hated blindly and without the faintestspark of reason. He hated the chain that bound him, the men who peered in athim through the slats of the pen, the dogs that accompanied the men and thatsnarled malignantly at him in his helplessness. He hated the very wood of thepen that confined him. And, first, last, and most of all, he hated BeautySmith.

But Beauty Smith had a purpose in all that he did to White Fang. One day anumber of men gathered about the pen. Beauty Smith entered, club in hand, andtook 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 menoutside. He was magnificently terrible. Fully five feet in length, and standingtwo and one-half feet at the shoulder, he far outweighed a wolf ofcorresponding size. From his mother he had inherited the heavier proportions ofthe dog, so that he weighed, without any fat and without an ounce ofsuperfluous flesh, over ninety pounds. It was all muscle, bone, andsinew-fighting flesh in the finest condition.

The door of the pen was being opened again. White Fang paused. Somethingunusual was happening. He waited. The door was opened wider. Then a huge dogwas thrust inside, and the door was slammed shut behind him. White Fang hadnever seen such a dog (it was a mastiff); but the size and fierce aspect of theintruder did not deter him. Here was some thing, not wood nor iron, upon whichto wreak his hate. He leaped in with a flash of fangs that ripped down the sideof the mastiff’s neck. The mastiff shook his head, growled hoarsely, andplunged at White Fang. But White Fang was here, there, and everywhere, alwaysevading and eluding, and always leaping in and slashing with his fangs andleaping out again in time to escape punishment.

The men outside shouted and applauded, while Beauty Smith, in an ecstasy ofdelight, gloated over the ripping and mangling performed by White Fang. Therewas no hope for the mastiff from the first. He was too ponderous and slow. Inthe end, while Beauty Smith beat White Fang back with a club, the mastiff wasdragged out by its owner. Then there was a payment of bets, and money clinkedin Beauty Smith’s hand.

White Fang came to look forward eagerly to the gathering of the men around hispen. It meant a fight; and this was the only way that was now vouchsafed him ofexpressing the life that was in him. Tormented, incited to hate, he was kept aprisoner so that there was no way of satisfying that hate except at the timeshis master saw fit to put another dog against him. Beauty Smith had estimatedhis powers well, for he was invariably the victor. One day, three dogs wereturned in upon him in succession. Another day a full-grown wolf, fresh-caughtfrom the Wild, was shoved in through the door of the pen. And on still anotherday two dogs were set against him at the same time. This was his severestfight, and though in the end he killed them both he was himself half killed indoing it.

In the fall of the year, when the first snows were falling and mush-ice wasrunning in the river, Beauty Smith took passage for himself and White Fang on asteamboat bound up the Yukon to Dawson. White Fang had now achieved areputation in the land. As “the Fighting Wolf” he was known far andwide, and the cage in which he was kept on the steam-boat’s deck wasusually surrounded by curious men. He raged and snarled at them, or lay quietlyand studied them with cold hatred. Why should he not hate them? He never askedhimself 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 confinementwild beasts endure at the hands of men. And yet it was in precisely this waythat he was treated. Men stared at him, poked sticks between the bars to makehim snarl, and then laughed at him.

They were his environment, these men, and they were moulding the clay of himinto a more ferocious thing than had been intended by Nature. Nevertheless,Nature had given him plasticity. Where many another animal would have died orhad its spirit broken, he adjusted himself and lived, and at no expense of thespirit. Possibly Beauty Smith, arch-fiend and tormentor, was capable ofbreaking White Fang’s spirit, but as yet there were no signs of hissucceeding.

If Beauty Smith had in him a devil, White Fang had another; and the two of themraged against each other unceasingly. In the days before, White Fang had hadthe wisdom to cower down and submit to a man with a club in his hand; but thiswisdom now left him. The mere sight of Beauty Smith was sufficient to send himinto transports of fury. And when they came to close quarters, and he had beenbeaten back by the club, he went on growling and snarling, and showing hisfangs. The last growl could never be extracted from him. No matter how terriblyhe was beaten, he had always another growl; and when Beauty Smith gave up andwithdrew, the defiant growl followed after him, or White Fang sprang at thebars of the cage bellowing his hatred.

When the steamboat arrived at Dawson, White Fang went ashore. But he stilllived 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 seehim. He was given no rest. Did he lie down to sleep, he was stirred up by asharp stick—so that the audience might get its money’s worth. Inorder to make the exhibition interesting, he was kept in a rage most of thetime. But worse than all this, was the atmosphere in which he lived. He wasregarded as the most fearful of wild beasts, and this was borne in to himthrough the bars of the cage. Every word, every cautious action, on the part ofthe men, impressed upon him his own terrible ferocity. It was so much addedfuel to the flame of his fierceness. There could be but one result, and thatwas that his ferocity fed upon itself and increased. It was another instance ofthe plasticity of his clay, of his capacity for being moulded by the pressureof environment.

In addition to being exhibited he was a professional fighting animal. Atirregular intervals, whenever a fight could be arranged, he was taken out ofhis cage and led off into the woods a few miles from town. Usually thisoccurred at night, so as to avoid interference from the mounted police of theTerritory. After a few hours of waiting, when daylight had come, the audienceand the dog with which he was to fight arrived. In this manner it came aboutthat he fought all sizes and breeds of dogs. It was a savage land, the men weresavage, and the fights were usually to the death.

Since White Fang continued to fight, it is obvious that it was the other dogsthat died. He never knew defeat. His early training, when he fought withLip-lip and the whole puppy-pack, stood him in good stead. There was thetenacity with which he clung to the earth. No dog could make him lose hisfooting. This was the favourite trick of the wolf breeds—to rush in uponhim, either directly or with an unexpected swerve, in the hope of striking hisshoulder and overthrowing him. Mackenzie hounds, Eskimo and Labrador dogs,huskies and Malemutes—all tried it on him, and all failed. He was neverknown to lose his footing. Men told this to one another, and looked each timeto see it happen; but White Fang always disappointed them.

Then there was his lightning quickness. It gave him a tremendous advantage overhis antagonists. No matter what their fighting experience, they had neverencountered a dog that moved so swiftly as he. Also to be reckoned with, wasthe immediateness of his attack. The average dog was accustomed to thepreliminaries of snarling and bristling and growling, and the average dog wasknocked off his feet and finished before he had begun to fight or recoveredfrom his surprise. So often did this happen, that it became the custom to holdWhite Fang until the other dog went through its preliminaries, was good andready, and even made the first attack.

But greatest of all the advantages in White Fang’s favour, was hisexperience. He knew more about fighting than did any of the dogs that facedhim. He had fought more fights, knew how to meet more tricks and methods, andhad more tricks himself, while his own method was scarcely to be improved upon.

As the time went by, he had fewer and fewer fights. Men despaired of matchinghim 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 WhiteFang and a wolf was always sure to draw a crowd. Once, a full-grown female lynxwas secured, and this time White Fang fought for his life. Her quicknessmatched 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 moreanimals with which to fight—at least, there was none considered worthy offighting with him. So he remained on exhibition until spring, when one TimKeenan, a faro-dealer, arrived in the land. With him came the first bull-dogthat had ever entered the Klondike. That this dog and White Fang should cometogether was inevitable, and for a week the anticipated fight was themainspring of conversation in certain quarters of the town.

CHAPTER IV
THE CLINGING DEATH

Beauty Smith slipped the chain from his neck and stepped back.

For once White Fang did not make an immediate attack. He stood still, earspricked forward, alert and curious, surveying the strange animal that facedhim. He had never seen such a dog before. Tim Keenan shoved the bull-dogforward with a muttered “Go to it.” The animal waddled toward thecentre of the circle, short and squat and ungainly. He came to a stop andblinked across at White Fang.

There were cries from the crowd of, “Go to him, Cherokee! Sick ’m,Cherokee! Eat ’m up!”

But Cherokee did not seem anxious to fight. He turned his head and blinked atthe men who shouted, at the same time wagging his stump of a tailgood-naturedly. He was not afraid, but merely lazy. Besides, it did not seem tohim that it was intended he should fight with the dog he saw before him. He wasnot used to fighting with that kind of dog, and he was waiting for them tobring on the real dog.

Tim Keenan stepped in and bent over Cherokee, fondling him on both sides of theshoulders with hands that rubbed against the grain of the hair and that madeslight, pushing-forward movements. These were so many suggestions. Also, theireffect was irritating, for Cherokee began to growl, very softly, deep down inhis throat. There was a correspondence in rhythm between the growls and themovements of the man’s hands. The growl rose in the throat with theculmination of each forward-pushing movement, and ebbed down to start up afreshwith the beginning of the next movement. The end of each movement was theaccent of the rhythm, the movement ending abruptly and the growling rising witha jerk.

This was not without its effect on White Fang. The hair began to rise on hisneck and across the shoulders. Tim Keenan gave a final shove forward andstepped back again. As the impetus that carried Cherokee forward died down, hecontinued to go forward of his own volition, in a swift, bow-legged run. ThenWhite Fang struck. A cry of startled admiration went up. He had covered thedistance and gone in more like a cat than a dog; and with the same cat-likeswiftness he had slashed with his fangs and leaped clear.

The bull-dog was bleeding back of one ear from a rip in his thick neck. He gaveno sign, did not even snarl, but turned and followed after White Fang. Thedisplay on both sides, the quickness of the one and the steadiness of theother, had excited the partisan spirit of the crowd, and the men were makingnew bets and increasing original bets. Again, and yet again, White Fang sprangin, slashed, and got away untouched, and still his strange foe followed afterhim, without too great haste, not slowly, but deliberately and determinedly, ina businesslike sort of way. There was purpose in his method—something forhim to do that he was intent upon doing and from which nothing could distracthim.

His whole demeanour, every action, was stamped with this purpose. It puzzledWhite Fang. Never had he seen such a dog. It had no hair protection. It wassoft, and bled easily. There was no thick mat of fur to baffle WhiteFang’s teeth as they were often baffled by dogs of his own breed. Eachtime that his teeth struck they sank easily into the yielding flesh, while theanimal did not seem able to defend itself. Another disconcerting thing was thatit made no outcry, such as he had been accustomed to with the other dogs he hadfought. Beyond a growl or a grunt, the dog took its punishment silently. Andnever did it flag in its pursuit of him.

Not that Cherokee was slow. He could turn and whirl swiftly enough, but WhiteFang was never there. Cherokee was puzzled, too. He had never fought beforewith a dog with which he could not close. The desire to close had always beenmutual. But here was a dog that kept at a distance, dancing and dodging hereand there and all about. And when it did get its teeth into him, it did nothold on but let go instantly and darted away again.

But White Fang could not get at the soft underside of the throat. The bull-dogstood too short, while its massive jaws were an added protection. White Fangdarted in and out unscathed, while Cherokee’s wounds increased. Bothsides of his neck and head were ripped and slashed. He bled freely, but showedno signs of being disconcerted. He continued his plodding pursuit, though once,for the moment baffled, he came to a full stop and blinked at the men wholooked on, at the same time wagging his stump of a tail as an expression of hiswillingness to fight.

In that moment White Fang was in upon him and out, in passing ripping histrimmed remnant of an ear. With a slight manifestation of anger, Cherokee tookup the pursuit again, running on the inside of the circle White Fang wasmaking, and striving to fasten his deadly grip on White Fang’s throat.The bull-dog missed by a hair’s-breadth, and cries of praise went up asWhite Fang doubled suddenly out of danger in the opposite direction.

The time went by. White Fang still danced on, dodging and doubling, leaping inand out, and ever inflicting damage. And still the bull-dog, with grimcertitude, toiled after him. Sooner or later he would accomplish his purpose,get the grip that would win the battle. In the meantime, he accepted all thepunishment the other could deal him. His tufts of ears had become tassels, hisneck and shoulders were slashed in a score of places, and his very lips werecut and bleeding—all from these lightning snaps that were beyond hisforeseeing and guarding.

Time and again White Fang had attempted to knock Cherokee off his feet; but thedifference in their height was too great. Cherokee was too squat, too close tothe ground. White Fang tried the trick once too often. The chance came in oneof his quick doublings and counter-circlings. He caught Cherokee with headturned away as he whirled more slowly. His shoulder was exposed. White Fangdrove in upon it: but his own shoulder was high above, while he struck withsuch force that his momentum carried him on across over the other’s body.For the first time in his fighting history, men saw White Fang lose hisfooting. His body turned a half-somersault in the air, and he would have landedon his back had he not twisted, catlike, still in the air, in the effort tobring his feet to the earth. As it was, he struck heavily on his side. The nextinstant he was on his feet, but in that instant Cherokee’s teeth closedon his throat.

It was not a good grip, being too low down toward the chest; but Cherokee heldon. White Fang sprang to his feet and tore wildly around, trying to shake offthe bull-dog’s body. It made him frantic, this clinging, dragging weight.It bound his movements, restricted his freedom. It was like the trap, and allhis instinct resented it and revolted against it. It was a mad revolt. Forseveral minutes he was to all intents insane. The basic life that was in himtook charge of him. The will to exist of his body surged over him. He wasdominated by this mere flesh-love of life. All intelligence was gone. It was asthough he had no brain. His reason was unseated by the blind yearning of theflesh to exist and move, at all hazards to move, to continue to move, formovement was the expression of its existence.

Round and round he went, whirling and turning and reversing, trying to shakeoff the fifty-pound weight that dragged at his throat. The bull-dog did littlebut keep his grip. Sometimes, and rarely, he managed to get his feet to theearth and for a moment to brace himself against White Fang. But the next momenthis footing would be lost and he would be dragging around in the whirl of oneof White Fang’s mad gyrations. Cherokee identified himself with hisinstinct. He knew that he was doing the right thing by holding on, and therecame to him certain blissful thrills of satisfaction. At such moments he evenclosed his eyes and allowed his body to be hurled hither and thither,willy-nilly, careless of any hurt that might thereby come to it. That did notcount. The grip was the thing, and the grip he kept.

White Fang ceased only when he had tired himself out. He could do nothing, andhe could not understand. Never, in all his fighting, had this thing happened.The dogs he had fought with did not fight that way. With them it was snap andslash and get away, snap and slash and get away. He lay partly on his side,panting for breath. Cherokee still holding his grip, urged against him, tryingto get him over entirely on his side. White Fang resisted, and he could feelthe jaws shifting their grip, slightly relaxing and coming together again in achewing movement. Each shift brought the grip closer to his throat. Thebull-dog’s method was to hold what he had, and when opportunity favouredto work in for more. Opportunity favoured when White Fang remained quiet. WhenWhite Fang struggled, Cherokee was content merely to hold on.

The bulging back of Cherokee’s neck was the only portion of his body thatWhite Fang’s teeth could reach. He got hold toward the base where theneck comes out from the shoulders; but he did not know the chewing method offighting, nor were his jaws adapted to it. He spasmodically ripped and torewith his fangs for a space. Then a change in their position diverted him. Thebull-dog had managed to roll him over on his back, and still hanging on to histhroat, was on top of him. Like a cat, White Fang bowed his hind-quarters in,and, with the feet digging into his enemy’s abdomen above him, he beganto claw with long tearing-strokes. Cherokee might well have been disembowelledhad he not quickly pivoted on his grip and got his body off of WhiteFang’s and at right angles to it.

There was no escaping that grip. It was like Fate itself, and as inexorable.Slowly it shifted up along the jugular. All that saved White Fang from deathwas the loose skin of his neck and the thick fur that covered it. This servedto form a large roll in Cherokee’s mouth, the fur of which well-nighdefied his teeth. But bit by bit, whenever the chance offered, he was gettingmore of the loose skin and fur in his mouth. The result was that he was slowlythrottling White Fang. The latter’s breath was drawn with greater andgreater difficulty as the moments went by.

It began to look as though the battle were over. The backers of Cherokee waxedjubilant and offered ridiculous odds. White Fang’s backers werecorrespondingly depressed, and refused bets of ten to one and twenty to one,though one man was rash enough to close a wager of fifty to one. This man wasBeauty Smith. He took a step into the ring and pointed his finger at WhiteFang. Then he began to laugh derisively and scornfully. This produced thedesired effect. White Fang went wild with rage. He called up his reserves ofstrength, and gained his feet. As he struggled around the ring, the fiftypounds of his foe ever dragging on his throat, his anger passed on into panic.The basic life of him dominated him again, and his intelligence fled before thewill of his flesh to live. Round and round and back again, stumbling andfalling and rising, even uprearing at times on his hind-legs and lifting hisfoe clear of the earth, he struggled vainly to shake off the clinging death.

At last he fell, toppling backward, exhausted; and the bull-dog promptlyshifted his grip, getting in closer, mangling more and more of the fur-foldedflesh, throttling White Fang more severely than ever. Shouts of applause wentup for the victor, and there were many cries of “Cherokee!”“Cherokee!” To this Cherokee responded by vigorous wagging of thestump of his tail. But the clamour of approval did not distract him. There wasno sympathetic relation between his tail and his massive jaws. The one mightwag, but the others held their terrible grip on White Fang’s throat.

It was at this time that a diversion came to the spectators. There was a jingleof bells. Dog-mushers’ cries were heard. Everybody, save Beauty Smith,looked apprehensively, the fear of the police strong upon them. But they saw,up the trail, and not down, two men running with sled and dogs. They wereevidently coming down the creek from some prospecting trip. At sight of thecrowd they stopped their dogs and came over and joined it, curious to see thecause of the excitement. The dog-musher wore a moustache, but the other, ataller and younger man, was smooth-shaven, his skin rosy from the pounding ofhis blood and the running in the frosty air.

White Fang had practically ceased struggling. Now and again he resistedspasmodically and to no purpose. He could get little air, and that little grewless and less under the merciless grip that ever tightened. In spite of hisarmour of fur, the great vein of his throat would have long since been tornopen, had not the first grip of the bull-dog been so low down as to bepractically on the chest. It had taken Cherokee a long time to shift that gripupward, and this had also tended further to clog his jaws with fur andskin-fold.

In the meantime, the abysmal brute in Beauty Smith had been rising into hisbrain and mastering the small bit of sanity that he possessed at best. When hesaw White Fang’s eyes beginning to glaze, he knew beyond doubt that thefight was lost. Then he broke loose. He sprang upon White Fang and begansavagely to kick him. There were hisses from the crowd and cries of protest,but that was all. While this went on, and Beauty Smith continued to kick WhiteFang, there was a commotion in the crowd. The tall young newcomer was forcinghis way through, shouldering men right and left without ceremony or gentleness.When he broke through into the ring, Beauty Smith was just in the act ofdelivering another kick. All his weight was on one foot, and he was in a stateof unstable equilibrium. At that moment the newcomer’s fist landed asmashing blow full in his face. Beauty Smith’s remaining leg left theground, and his whole body seemed to lift into the air as he turned overbackward and struck the snow. The newcomer turned upon the crowd.

“You cowards!” he cried. “You beasts!”

He was in a rage himself—a sane rage. His grey eyes seemed metallic andsteel-like as they flashed upon the crowd. Beauty Smith regained his feet andcame toward him, sniffling and cowardly. The new-comer did not understand. Hedid not know how abject a coward the other was, and thought he was coming backintent on fighting. So, with a “You beast!” he smashed Beauty Smithover backward with a second blow in the face. Beauty Smith decided that thesnow was the safest place for him, and lay where he had fallen, making noeffort to get up.

“Come on, Matt, lend a hand,” the newcomer called the dog-musher,who had followed him into the ring.

Both men bent over the dogs. Matt took hold of White Fang, ready to pull whenCherokee’s jaws should be loosened. This the younger man endeavoured toaccomplish by clutching the bulldog’s jaws in his hands and trying tospread them. It was a vain undertaking. As he pulled and tugged and wrenched,he kept exclaiming with every expulsion of breath, “Beasts!”

The crowd began to grow unruly, and some of the men were protesting against thespoiling of the sport; but they were silenced when the newcomer lifted his headfrom his work for a moment and glared at them.

“You damn beasts!” he finally exploded, and went back to his task.

“It’s no use, Mr. Scott, you can’t break ’m apart thatway,” Matt said at last.

The pair paused and surveyed the locked dogs.

“Ain’t bleedin’ much,” Matt announced.“Ain’t got all the way in yet.”

“But he’s liable to any moment,” Scott answered.“There, did you see that! He shifted his grip in a bit.”

The younger man’s excitement and apprehension for White Fang was growing.He struck Cherokee about the head savagely again and again. But that did notloosen the jaws. Cherokee wagged the stump of his tail in advertisement that heunderstood the meaning of the blows, but that he knew he was himself in theright and only doing his duty by keeping his grip.

“Won’t some of you help?” Scott cried desperately at thecrowd.

But no help was offered. Instead, the crowd began sarcastically to cheer him onand showered him with facetious advice.

“You’ll have to get a pry,” Matt counselled.

The other reached into the holster at his hip, drew his revolver, and tried tothrust its muzzle between the bull-dog’s jaws. He shoved, and shovedhard, till the grating of the steel against the locked teeth could bedistinctly heard. Both men were on their knees, bending over the dogs. TimKeenan strode into the ring. He paused beside Scott and touched him on theshoulder, saying ominously:

“Don’t break them teeth, stranger.”

“Then I’ll break his neck,” Scott retorted, continuing hisshoving and wedging with the revolver muzzle.

“I said don’t break them teeth,” the faro-dealer repeatedmore ominously than before.

But if it was a bluff he intended, it did not work. Scott never desisted fromhis efforts, though he looked up coolly and asked:

“Your dog?”

The faro-dealer grunted.

“Then get in here and break this grip.”

“Well, stranger,” the other drawled irritatingly, “Idon’t mind telling you that’s something I ain’t worked outfor myself. I don’t know how to turn the trick.”

“Then get out of the way,” was the reply, “and don’tbother me. I’m busy.”

Tim Keenan continued standing over him, but Scott took no further notice of hispresence. He had managed to get the muzzle in between the jaws on one side, andwas trying to get it out between the jaws on the other side. This accomplished,he pried gently and carefully, loosening the jaws a bit at a time, while Matt,a bit at a time, extricated White Fang’s mangled neck.

“Stand by to receive your dog,” was Scott’s peremptory orderto Cherokee’s owner.

The faro-dealer stooped down obediently and got a firm hold on Cherokee.

“Now!” Scott warned, giving the final pry.

The dogs were drawn apart, the bull-dog struggling vigorously.

“Take him away,” Scott commanded, and Tim Keenan dragged Cherokeeback into the crowd.

White Fang made several ineffectual efforts to get up. Once he gained his feet,but his legs were too weak to sustain him, and he slowly wilted and sank backinto the snow. His eyes were half closed, and the surface of them was glassy.His jaws were apart, and through them the tongue protruded, draggled and limp.To all appearances he looked like a dog that had been strangled to death. Mattexamined him.

“Just about all in,” he announced; “but he’sbreathin’ all right.”

Beauty Smith had regained his feet and come over to look at White Fang.

“Matt, how much is a good sled-dog worth?” Scott asked.

The dog-musher, still on his knees and stooped over White Fang, calculated fora moment.

“Three hundred dollars,” he answered.

“And how much for one that’s all chewed up like this one?”Scott asked, nudging White Fang with his foot.

“Half of that,” was the dog-musher’s judgment. Scott turnedupon Beauty Smith.

“Did you hear, Mr. Beast? I’m going to take your dog from you, andI’m going to give you a hundred and fifty for him.”

He opened his pocket-book and counted out the bills.

Beauty Smith put his hands behind his back, refusing to touch the profferedmoney.

“I ain’t a-sellin’,” he said.

“Oh, yes you are,” the other assured him. “Because I’mbuying. Here’s your money. The dog’s mine.”

Beauty Smith, his hands still behind him, began to back away.

Scott sprang toward him, drawing his fist back to strike. Beauty Smith cowereddown in anticipation of the blow.

“I’ve got my rights,” he whimpered.

“You’ve forfeited your rights to own that dog,” was therejoinder. “Are you going to take the money? or do I have to hit youagain?”

“All right,” Beauty Smith spoke up with the alacrity of fear.“But I take the money under protest,” he added. “Thedog’s a mint. I ain’t a-goin’ to be robbed. A man’s gothis rights.”

“Correct,” Scott answered, passing the money over to him. “Aman’s got his rights. But you’re not a man. You’re abeast.”

“Wait till I get back to Dawson,” Beauty Smith threatened.“I’ll have the law on you.”

“If you open your mouth when you get back to Dawson, I’ll have yourun out of town. Understand?”

Beauty Smith replied with a grunt.

“Understand?” the other thundered with abrupt fierceness.

“Yes,” Beauty Smith grunted, shrinking away.

“Yes what?”

“Yes, sir,” Beauty Smith snarled.

“Look out! He’ll bite!” some one shouted, and a guffaw oflaughter went up.

Scott turned his back on him, and returned to help the dog-musher, who wasworking over White Fang.

Some of the men were already departing; others stood in groups, looking on andtalking. Tim Keenan joined one of the groups.

“Who’s that mug?” he asked.

“Weedon Scott,” some one answered.

“And who in hell is Weedon Scott?” the faro-dealer demanded.

“Oh, one of them crackerjack minin’ experts. He’s in with allthe big bugs. If you want to keep out of trouble, you’ll steer clear ofhim, that’s my talk. He’s all hunky with the officials. The GoldCommissioner’s a special pal of his.”

“I thought he must be somebody,” was the faro-dealer’scomment. “That’s why I kept my hands offen him at the start.”

CHAPTER V
THE INDOMITABLE

“It’s hopeless,” Weedon Scott confessed.

He sat on the step of his cabin and stared at the dog-musher, who respondedwith a shrug that was equally hopeless.

Together they looked at White Fang at the end of his stretched chain,bristling, snarling, ferocious, straining to get at the sled-dogs. Havingreceived sundry lessons from Matt, said lessons being imparted by means of aclub, the sled-dogs had learned to leave White Fang alone; and even then theywere lying down at a distance, apparently oblivious of his existence.

“It’s a wolf and there’s no taming it,” Weedon Scottannounced.

“Oh, I don’t know about that,” Matt objected. “Might bea lot of dog in ’m, for all you can tell. But there’s one thing Iknow sure, an’ that there’s no gettin’ away from.”

The dog-musher paused and nodded his head confidentially at Moosehide Mountain.

“Well, don’t be a miser with what you know,” Scott saidsharply, after waiting a suitable length of time. “Spit it out. What isit?”

The dog-musher indicated White Fang with a backward thrust of his thumb.

“Wolf or dog, it’s all the same—he’s ben tamed’ready.”

“No!”

“I tell you yes, an’ broke to harness. Look close there. D’yesee them marks across the chest?”

“You’re right, Matt. He was a sled-dog before Beauty Smith got holdof him.”

“And there’s not much reason against his bein’ a sled-dogagain.”

“What d’ye think?” Scott queried eagerly. Then the hope dieddown as he added, shaking his head, “We’ve had him two weeks now,and if anything he’s wilder than ever at the present moment.”

“Give ’m a chance,” Matt counselled. “Turn ’mloose for a spell.”

The other looked at him incredulously.

“Yes,” Matt went on, “I know you’ve tried to, but youdidn’t take a club.”

“You try it then.”

The dog-musher secured a club and went over to the chained animal. White Fangwatched the club after the manner of a caged lion watching the whip of itstrainer.

“See ’m keep his eye on that club,” Matt said.“That’s a good sign. He’s no fool. Don’t dast tackle meso long as I got that club handy. He’s not clean crazy, sure.”

As the man’s hand approached his neck, White Fang bristled and snarledand crouched down. But while he eyed the approaching hand, he at the same timecontrived to keep track of the club in the other hand, suspended threateninglyabove him. Matt unsnapped the chain from the collar and stepped back.

White Fang could scarcely realise that he was free. Many months had gone bysince he passed into the possession of Beauty Smith, and in all that period hehad never known a moment of freedom except at the times he had been loosed tofight with other dogs. Immediately after such fights he had always beenimprisoned again.

He did not know what to make of it. Perhaps some new devilry of the gods wasabout to be perpetrated on him. He walked slowly and cautiously, prepared to beassailed at any moment. He did not know what to do, it was all sounprecedented. He took the precaution to sheer off from the two watching gods,and walked carefully to the corner of the cabin. Nothing happened. He wasplainly perplexed, and he came back again, pausing a dozen feet away andregarding the two men intently.

“Won’t he run away?” his new owner asked.

Matt shrugged his shoulders. “Got to take a gamble. Only way to find outis to find out.”

“Poor devil,” Scott murmured pityingly. “What he needs issome show of human kindness,” he added, turning and going into the cabin.

He came out with a piece of meat, which he tossed to White Fang. He sprang awayfrom it, and from a distance studied it suspiciously.

“Hi-yu, Major!” Matt shouted warningly, but too late.

Major had made a spring for the meat. At the instant his jaws closed on it,White Fang struck him. He was overthrown. Matt rushed in, but quicker than hewas White Fang. Major staggered to his feet, but the blood spouting from histhroat reddened the snow in a widening path.

“It’s too bad, but it served him right,” Scott said hastily.

But Matt’s foot had already started on its way to kick White Fang. Therewas a leap, a flash of teeth, a sharp exclamation. White Fang, snarlingfiercely, scrambled backward for several yards, while Matt stooped andinvestigated his leg.

“He got me all right,” he announced, pointing to the torn trousersand undercloths, and the growing stain of red.

“I told you it was hopeless, Matt,” Scott said in a discouragedvoice. “I’ve thought about it off and on, while not wanting tothink of it. But we’ve come to it now. It’s the only thing todo.”

As he talked, with reluctant movements he drew his revolver, threw open thecylinder, and assured himself of its contents.

“Look here, Mr. Scott,” Matt objected; “that dog’s benthrough hell. You can’t expect ’m to come out a white an’shinin’ angel. Give ’m time.”

“Look at Major,” the other rejoined.

The dog-musher surveyed the stricken dog. He had sunk down on the snow in thecircle of his blood and was plainly in the last gasp.

“Served ’m right. You said so yourself, Mr. Scott. He tried to takeWhite Fang’s meat, an’ he’s dead-O. That was to be expected.I wouldn’t give two whoops in hell for a dog that wouldn’t fightfor his own meat.”

“But look at yourself, Matt. It’s all right about the dogs, but wemust draw the line somewhere.”

“Served me right,” Matt argued stubbornly. “What’d Iwant to kick ’m for? You said yourself that he’d done right. Then Ihad no right to kick ’m.”

“It would be a mercy to kill him,” Scott insisted.“He’s untamable.”

“Now look here, Mr. Scott, give the poor devil a fightin’ chance.He ain’t had no chance yet. He’s just come through hell, an’this is the first time he’s ben loose. Give ’m a fair chance,an’ if he don’t deliver the goods, I’ll kill ’m myself.There!”

“God knows I don’t want to kill him or have him killed,”Scott answered, putting away the revolver. “We’ll let him run looseand see what kindness can do for him. And here’s a try at it.”

He walked over to White Fang and began talking to him gently and soothingly.

“Better have a club handy,” Matt warned.

Scott shook his head and went on trying to win White Fang’s confidence.

White Fang was suspicious. Something was impending. He had killed thisgod’s dog, bitten his companion god, and what else was to be expectedthan some terrible punishment? But in the face of it he was indomitable. Hebristled and showed his teeth, his eyes vigilant, his whole body wary andprepared for anything. The god had no club, so he suffered him to approachquite near. The god’s hand had come out and was descending upon his head.White Fang shrank together and grew tense as he crouched under it. Here wasdanger, some treachery or something. He knew the hands of the gods, theirproved mastery, their cunning to hurt. Besides, there was his old antipathy tobeing touched. He snarled more menacingly, crouched still lower, and still thehand descended. He did not want to bite the hand, and he endured the peril ofit until his instinct surged up in him, mastering him with its insatiableyearning for life.

Weedon Scott had believed that he was quick enough to avoid any snap or slash.But he had yet to learn the remarkable quickness of White Fang, who struck withthe certainty and swiftness of a coiled snake.

Scott cried out sharply with surprise, catching his torn hand and holding ittightly in his other hand. Matt uttered a great oath and sprang to his side.White Fang crouched down, and backed away, bristling, showing his fangs, hiseyes malignant with menace. Now he could expect a beating as fearful as any hehad received from Beauty Smith.

“Here! What are you doing?” Scott cried suddenly.

Matt had dashed into the cabin and come out with a rifle.

“Nothin’,” he said slowly, with a careless calmness that wasassumed, “only goin’ to keep that promise I made. I reckonit’s up to me to kill ’m as I said I’d do.”

“No you don’t!”

“Yes I do. Watch me.”

As Matt had pleaded for White Fang when he had been bitten, it was now WeedonScott’s turn to plead.

“You said to give him a chance. Well, give it to him. We’ve onlyjust started, and we can’t quit at the beginning. It served me right,this time. And—look at him!”

White Fang, near the corner of the cabin and forty feet away, was snarling withblood-curdling viciousness, not at Scott, but at the dog-musher.

“Well, I’ll be everlastingly gosh-swoggled!” was thedog-musher’s expression of astonishment.

“Look at the intelligence of him,” Scott went on hastily. “Heknows the meaning of firearms as well as you do. He’s got intelligenceand we’ve got to give that intelligence a chance. Put up the gun.”

“All right, I’m willin’,” Matt agreed, leaning therifle against the woodpile.

“But will you look at that!” he exclaimed the next moment.

White Fang had quieted down and ceased snarling. “This is worthinvestigatin’. Watch.”

Matt, reached for the rifle, and at the same moment White Fang snarled. Hestepped away from the rifle, and White Fang’s lifted lips descended,covering his teeth.

“Now, just for fun.”

Matt took the rifle and began slowly to raise it to his shoulder. WhiteFang’s snarling began with the movement, and increased as the movementapproached its culmination. But the moment before the rifle came to a level onhim, he leaped sidewise behind the corner of the cabin. Matt stood staringalong the sights at the empty space of snow which had been occupied by WhiteFang.

The dog-musher put the rifle down solemnly, then turned and looked at hisemployer.

“I agree with you, Mr. Scott. That dog’s too intelligent tokill.”

CHAPTER VI
THE LOVE-MASTER

As White Fang watched Weedon Scott approach, he bristled and snarled toadvertise that he would not submit to punishment. Twenty-four hours had passedsince he had slashed open the hand that was now bandaged and held up by a slingto keep the blood out of it. In the past White Fang had experienced delayedpunishments, and he apprehended that such a one was about to befall him. Howcould it be otherwise? He had committed what was to him sacrilege, sunk hisfangs into the holy flesh of a god, and of a white-skinned superior god atthat. In the nature of things, and of intercourse with gods, something terribleawaited him.

The god sat down several feet away. White Fang could see nothing dangerous inthat. When the gods administered punishment they stood on their legs. Besides,this god had no club, no whip, no firearm. And furthermore, he himself wasfree. No chain nor stick bound him. He could escape into safety while the godwas scrambling to his feet. In the meantime he would wait and see.

The god remained quiet, made no movement; and White Fang’s snarl slowlydwindled to a growl that ebbed down in his throat and ceased. Then the godspoke, and at the first sound of his voice, the hair rose on White Fang’sneck and the growl rushed up in his throat. But the god made no hostilemovement, and went on calmly talking. For a time White Fang growled in unisonwith him, a correspondence of rhythm being established between growl and voice.But the god talked on interminably. He talked to White Fang as White Fang hadnever been talked to before. He talked softly and soothingly, with a gentlenessthat somehow, somewhere, touched White Fang. In spite of himself and all thepricking warnings of his instinct, White Fang began to have confidence in thisgod. He had a feeling of security that was belied by all his experience withmen.

After a long time, the god got up and went into the cabin. White Fang scannedhim apprehensively when he came out. He had neither whip nor club nor weapon.Nor was his uninjured hand behind his back hiding something. He sat down asbefore, in the same spot, several feet away. He held out a small piece of meat.White Fang pricked his ears and investigated it suspiciously, managing to lookat the same time both at the meat and the god, alert for any overt act, hisbody tense and ready to spring away at the first sign of hostility.

Still the punishment delayed. The god merely held near to his nose a piece ofmeat. And about the meat there seemed nothing wrong. Still White Fangsuspected; and though the meat was proffered to him with short inviting thrustsof the hand, he refused to touch it. The gods were all-wise, and there was notelling what masterful treachery lurked behind that apparently harmless pieceof meat. In past experience, especially in dealing with squaws, meat andpunishment had often been disastrously related.

In the end, the god tossed the meat on the snow at White Fang’s feet. Hesmelled the meat carefully; but he did not look at it. While he smelled it hekept his eyes on the god. Nothing happened. He took the meat into his mouth andswallowed it. Still nothing happened. The god was actually offering him anotherpiece of meat. Again he refused to take it from the hand, and again it wastossed to him. This was repeated a number of times. But there came a time whenthe god refused to toss it. He kept it in his hand and steadfastly profferedit.

The meat was good meat, and White Fang was hungry. Bit by bit, infinitelycautious, he approached the hand. At last the time came that he decided to eatthe meat from the hand. He never took his eyes from the god, thrusting his headforward with ears flattened back and hair involuntarily rising and cresting onhis neck. Also a low growl rumbled in his throat as warning that he was not tobe trifled with. He ate the meat, and nothing happened. Piece by piece, he ateall the meat, and nothing happened. Still the punishment delayed.

He licked his chops and waited. The god went on talking. In his voice waskindness—something of which White Fang had no experience whatever. Andwithin him it aroused feelings which he had likewise never experienced before.He was aware of a certain strange satisfaction, as though some need were beinggratified, as though some void in his being were being filled. Then again camethe prod of his instinct and the warning of past experience. The gods were evercrafty, and they had unguessed ways of attaining their ends.

Ah, he had thought so! There it came now, the god’s hand, cunning tohurt, thrusting out at him, descending upon his head. But the god went ontalking. His voice was soft and soothing. In spite of the menacing hand, thevoice inspired confidence. And in spite of the assuring voice, the handinspired distrust. White Fang was torn by conflicting feelings, impulses. Itseemed he would fly to pieces, so terrible was the control he was exerting,holding together by an unwonted indecision the counter-forces that struggledwithin him for mastery.

He compromised. He snarled and bristled and flattened his ears. But he neithersnapped nor sprang away. The hand descended. Nearer and nearer it came. Ittouched the ends of his upstanding hair. He shrank down under it. It followeddown after him, pressing more closely against him. Shrinking, almost shivering,he still managed to hold himself together. It was a torment, this hand thattouched him and violated his instinct. He could not forget in a day all theevil that had been wrought him at the hands of men. But it was the will of thegod, and he strove to submit.

The hand lifted and descended again in a patting, caressing movement. Thiscontinued, but every time the hand lifted, the hair lifted under it. And everytime the hand descended, the ears flattened down and a cavernous growl surgedin his throat. White Fang growled and growled with insistent warning. By thismeans he announced that he was prepared to retaliate for any hurt he mightreceive. There was no telling when the god’s ulterior motive might bedisclosed. At any moment that soft, confidence-inspiring voice might breakforth in a roar of wrath, that gentle and caressing hand transform itself intoa vice-like grip to hold him helpless and administer punishment.

But the god talked on softly, and ever the hand rose and fell with non-hostilepats. White Fang experienced dual feelings. It was distasteful to his instinct.It restrained him, opposed the will of him toward personal liberty. And yet itwas not physically painful. On the contrary, it was even pleasant, in aphysical way. The patting movement slowly and carefully changed to a rubbing ofthe ears about their bases, and the physical pleasure even increased a little.Yet he continued to fear, and he stood on guard, expectant of unguessed evil,alternately suffering and enjoying as one feeling or the other came uppermostand swayed him.

“Well, I’ll be gosh-swoggled!”

So spoke Matt, coming out of the cabin, his sleeves rolled up, a pan of dirtydish-water in his hands, arrested in the act of emptying the pan by the sightof Weedon Scott patting White Fang.

At the instant his voice broke the silence, White Fang leaped back, snarlingsavagely at him.

Matt regarded his employer with grieved disapproval.

“If you don’t mind my expressin’ my feelin’s, Mr.Scott, I’ll make free to say you’re seventeen kinds of a damn foolan’ all of ’em different, an’ then some.”

Weedon Scott smiled with a superior air, gained his feet, and walked over toWhite Fang. He talked soothingly to him, but not for long, then slowly put outhis hand, rested it on White Fang’s head, and resumed the interruptedpatting. White Fang endured it, keeping his eyes fixed suspiciously, not uponthe man that patted him, but upon the man that stood in the doorway.

“You may be a number one, tip-top minin’ expert, all right allright,” the dog-musher delivered himself oracularly, “but youmissed the chance of your life when you was a boy an’ didn’t runoff an’ join a circus.”

White Fang snarled at the sound of his voice, but this time did not leap awayfrom under the hand that was caressing his head and the back of his neck withlong, soothing strokes.

It was the beginning of the end for White Fang—the ending of the old lifeand the reign of hate. A new and incomprehensibly fairer life was dawning. Itrequired much thinking and endless patience on the part of Weedon Scott toaccomplish this. And on the part of White Fang it required nothing less than arevolution. He had to ignore the urges and promptings of instinct and reason,defy experience, give the lie to life itself.

Life, as he had known it, not only had had no place in it for much that he nowdid; but all the currents had gone counter to those to which he now abandonedhimself. In short, when all things were considered, he had to achieve anorientation far vaster than the one he had achieved at the time he camevoluntarily in from the Wild and accepted Grey Beaver as his lord. At that timehe was a mere puppy, soft from the making, without form, ready for the thumb ofcircumstance to begin its work upon him. But now it was different. The thumb ofcircumstance had done its work only too well. By it he had been formed andhardened into the Fighting Wolf, fierce and implacable, unloving and unlovable.To accomplish the change was like a reflux of being, and this when theplasticity of youth was no longer his; when the fibre of him had become toughand knotty; when the warp and the woof of him had made of him an adamantinetexture, harsh and unyielding; when the face of his spirit had become iron andall his instincts and axioms had crystallised into set rules, cautions,dislikes, and desires.

Yet again, in this new orientation, it was the thumb of circumstance thatpressed and prodded him, softening that which had become hard and remoulding itinto fairer form. Weedon Scott was in truth this thumb. He had gone to theroots of White Fang’s nature, and with kindness touched to life potenciesthat had languished and well-nigh perished. One such potency was love.It took the place of like, which latter had been the highest feelingthat thrilled him in his intercourse with the gods.

But this love did not come in a day. It began with like and out of itslowly developed. White Fang did not run away, though he was allowed to remainloose, because he liked this new god. This was certainly better than the lifehe had lived in the cage of Beauty Smith, and it was necessary that he shouldhave some god. The lordship of man was a need of his nature. The seal of hisdependence on man had been set upon him in that early day when he turned hisback on the Wild and crawled to Grey Beaver’s feet to receive theexpected beating. This seal had been stamped upon him again, and ineradicably,on his second return from the Wild, when the long famine was over and there wasfish once more in the village of Grey Beaver.

And so, because he needed a god and because he preferred Weedon Scott to BeautySmith, White Fang remained. In acknowledgment of fealty, he proceeded to takeupon himself the guardianship of his master’s property. He prowled aboutthe cabin while the sled-dogs slept, and the first night-visitor to the cabinfought him off with a club until Weedon Scott came to the rescue. But WhiteFang soon learned to differentiate between thieves and honest men, to appraisethe true value of step and carriage. The man who travelled, loud-stepping, thedirect line to the cabin door, he let alone—though he watched himvigilantly until the door opened and he received the endorsement of the master.But the man who went softly, by circuitous ways, peering with caution, seekingafter secrecy—that was the man who received no suspension of judgmentfrom White Fang, and who went away abruptly, hurriedly, and without dignity.

Weedon Scott had set himself the task of redeeming White Fang—or rather,of redeeming mankind from the wrong it had done White Fang. It was a matter ofprinciple and conscience. He felt that the ill done White Fang was a debtincurred by man and that it must be paid. So he went out of his way to beespecially kind to the Fighting Wolf. Each day he made it a point to caress andpet White Fang, and to do it at length.

At first suspicious and hostile, White Fang grew to like this petting. Butthere was one thing that he never outgrew—his growling. Growl he would,from the moment the petting began till it ended. But it was a growl with a newnote in it. A stranger could not hear this note, and to such a stranger thegrowling of White Fang was an exhibition of primordial savagery, nerve-rackingand blood-curdling. But White Fang’s throat had become harsh-fibred fromthe making of ferocious sounds through the many years since his first littlerasp of anger in the lair of his cubhood, and he could not soften the sounds ofthat throat now to express the gentleness he felt. Nevertheless, WeedonScott’s ear and sympathy were fine enough to catch the new note all butdrowned in the fierceness—the note that was the faintest hint of a croonof content and that none but he could hear.

As the days went by, the evolution of like into love wasaccelerated. White Fang himself began to grow aware of it, though in hisconsciousness he knew not what love was. It manifested itself to him as a voidin his being—a hungry, aching, yearning void that clamoured to be filled.It was a pain and an unrest; and it received easement only by the touch of thenew god’s presence. At such times love was joy to him, a wild,keen-thrilling satisfaction. But when away from his god, the pain and theunrest returned; the void in him sprang up and pressed against him with itsemptiness, and the hunger gnawed and gnawed unceasingly.

White Fang was in the process of finding himself. In spite of the maturity ofhis years and of the savage rigidity of the mould that had formed him, hisnature was undergoing an expansion. There was a burgeoning within him ofstrange feelings and unwonted impulses. His old code of conduct was changing.In the past he had liked comfort and surcease from pain, disliked discomfortand pain, and he had adjusted his actions accordingly. But now it wasdifferent. Because of this new feeling within him, he ofttimes electeddiscomfort and pain for the sake of his god. Thus, in the early morning,instead of roaming and foraging, or lying in a sheltered nook, he would waitfor hours on the cheerless cabin-stoop for a sight of the god’s face. Atnight, when the god returned home, White Fang would leave the warmsleeping-place he had burrowed in the snow in order to receive the friendlysnap of fingers and the word of greeting. Meat, even meat itself, he wouldforego to be with his god, to receive a caress from him or to accompany himdown into the town.

Like had been replaced by love. And love was the plummet droppeddown into the deeps of him where like had never gone. And responsive out of hisdeeps had come the new thing—love. That which was given unto him did hereturn. This was a god indeed, a love-god, a warm and radiant god, in whoselight White Fang’s nature expanded as a flower expands under the sun.

But White Fang was not demonstrative. He was too old, too firmly moulded, tobecome adept at expressing himself in new ways. He was too self-possessed, toostrongly poised in his own isolation. Too long had he cultivated reticence,aloofness, and moroseness. He had never barked in his life, and he could notnow learn to bark a welcome when his god approached. He was never in the way,never extravagant nor foolish in the expression of his love. He never ran tomeet his god. He waited at a distance; but he always waited, was always there.His love partook of the nature of worship, dumb, inarticulate, a silentadoration. Only by the steady regard of his eyes did he express his love, andby the unceasing following with his eyes of his god’s every movement.Also, at times, when his god looked at him and spoke to him, he betrayed anawkward self-consciousness, caused by the struggle of his love to expressitself and his physical inability to express it.

He learned to adjust himself in many ways to his new mode of life. It was bornein upon him that he must let his master’s dogs alone. Yet his dominantnature asserted itself, and he had first to thrash them into an acknowledgmentof his superiority and leadership. This accomplished, he had little troublewith them. They gave trail to him when he came and went or walked among them,and when he asserted his will they obeyed.

In the same way, he came to tolerate Matt—as a possession of his master.His master rarely fed him. Matt did that, it was his business; yet White Fangdivined that it was his master’s food he ate and that it was his masterwho thus fed him vicariously. Matt it was who tried to put him into the harnessand make him haul sled with the other dogs. But Matt failed. It was not untilWeedon Scott put the harness on White Fang and worked him, that he understood.He took it as his master’s will that Matt should drive him and work himjust as he drove and worked his master’s other dogs.

Different from the Mackenzie toboggans were the Klondike sleds with runnersunder them. And different was the method of driving the dogs. There was nofan-formation of the team. The dogs worked in single file, one behind another,hauling on double traces. And here, in the Klondike, the leader was indeed theleader. The wisest as well as strongest dog was the leader, and the team obeyedhim and feared him. That White Fang should quickly gain this post wasinevitable. He could not be satisfied with less, as Matt learned after muchinconvenience and trouble. White Fang picked out the post for himself, and Mattbacked his judgment with strong language after the experiment had been tried.But, though he worked in the sled in the day, White Fang did not forego theguarding of his master’s property in the night. Thus he was on duty allthe time, ever vigilant and faithful, the most valuable of all the dogs.

“Makin’ free to spit out what’s in me,” Matt said oneday, “I beg to state that you was a wise guy all right when you paid theprice you did for that dog. You clean swindled Beauty Smith on top ofpushin’ his face in with your fist.”

A recrudescence of anger glinted in Weedon Scott’s grey eyes, and hemuttered savagely, “The beast!”

In the late spring a great trouble came to White Fang. Without warning, thelove-master disappeared. There had been warning, but White Fang was unversed insuch things and did not understand the packing of a grip. He rememberedafterwards that his packing had preceded the master’s disappearance; butat the time he suspected nothing. That night he waited for the master toreturn. At midnight the chill wind that blew drove him to shelter at the rearof the cabin. There he drowsed, only half asleep, his ears keyed for the firstsound of the familiar step. But, at two in the morning, his anxiety drove himout to the cold front stoop, where he crouched, and waited.

But no master came. In the morning the door opened and Matt stepped outside.White Fang gazed at him wistfully. There was no common speech by which he mightlearn what he wanted to know. The days came and went, but never the master.White Fang, who had never known sickness in his life, became sick. He becamevery sick, so sick that Matt was finally compelled to bring him inside thecabin. Also, in writing to his employer, Matt devoted a postscript to WhiteFang.

Weedon Scott reading the letter down in Circle City, came upon the following:

“That dam wolf won’t work. Won’t eat. Aint got no spunk left.All the dogs is licking him. Wants to know what has become of you, and Idon’t know how to tell him. Mebbe he is going to die.”

It was as Matt had said. White Fang had ceased eating, lost heart, and allowedevery dog of the team to thrash him. In the cabin he lay on the floor near thestove, without interest in food, in Matt, nor in life. Matt might talk gentlyto him or swear at him, it was all the same; he never did more than turn hisdull eyes upon the man, then drop his head back to its customary position onhis fore-paws.

And then, one night, Matt, reading to himself with moving lips and mumbledsounds, was startled by a low whine from White Fang. He had got upon his feet,his ears cocked towards the door, and he was listening intently. A momentlater, Matt heard a footstep. The door opened, and Weedon Scott stepped in. Thetwo men shook hands. Then Scott looked around the room.

“Where’s the wolf?” he asked.

Then he discovered him, standing where he had been lying, near to the stove. Hehad not rushed forward after the manner of other dogs. He stood, watching andwaiting.

“Holy smoke!” Matt exclaimed. “Look at ’m wag histail!”

Weedon Scott strode half across the room toward him, at the same time callinghim. White Fang came to him, not with a great bound, yet quickly. He wasawakened from self-consciousness, but as he drew near, his eyes took on astrange expression. Something, an incommunicable vastness of feeling, rose upinto his eyes as a light and shone forth.

“He never looked at me that way all the time you was gone!” Mattcommented.

Weedon Scott did not hear. He was squatting down on his heels, face to facewith White Fang and petting him—rubbing at the roots of the ears, makinglong caressing strokes down the neck to the shoulders, tapping the spine gentlywith the balls of his fingers. And White Fang was growling responsively, thecrooning note of the growl more pronounced than ever.

But that was not all. What of his joy, the great love in him, ever surging andstruggling to express itself, succeeded in finding a new mode of expression. Hesuddenly thrust his head forward and nudged his way in between themaster’s arm and body. And here, confined, hidden from view all excepthis ears, no longer growling, he continued to nudge and snuggle.

The two men looked at each other. Scott’s eyes were shining.

“Gosh!” said Matt in an awe-stricken voice.

A moment later, when he had recovered himself, he said, “I alwaysinsisted that wolf was a dog. Look at ’m!”

With the return of the love-master, White Fang’s recovery was rapid. Twonights and a day he spent in the cabin. Then he sallied forth. The sled-dogshad forgotten his prowess. They remembered only the latest, which was hisweakness and sickness. At the sight of him as he came out of the cabin, theysprang upon him.

“Talk about your rough-houses,” Matt murmured gleefully, standingin the doorway and looking on.

“Give ’m hell, you wolf! Give ’m hell!—an’ thensome!”

White Fang did not need the encouragement. The return of the love-master wasenough. Life was flowing through him again, splendid and indomitable. He foughtfrom sheer joy, finding in it an expression of much that he felt and thatotherwise was without speech. There could be but one ending. The team dispersedin ignominious defeat, and it was not until after dark that the dogs camesneaking back, one by one, by meekness and humility signifying their fealty toWhite Fang.

Having learned to snuggle, White Fang was guilty of it often. It was the finalword. He could not go beyond it. The one thing of which he had always beenparticularly jealous was his head. He had always disliked to have it touched.It was the Wild in him, the fear of hurt and of the trap, that had given riseto the panicky impulses to avoid contacts. It was the mandate of his instinctthat that head must be free. And now, with the love-master, his snuggling wasthe deliberate act of putting himself into a position of hopeless helplessness.It was an expression of perfect confidence, of absolute self-surrender, asthough he said: “I put myself into thy hands. Work thou thy will withme.”

One night, not long after the return, Scott and Matt sat at a game of cribbagepreliminary to going to bed. “Fifteen-two, fifteen-four an’ a pairmakes six,” Mat was pegging up, when there was an outcry and sound ofsnarling without. They looked at each other as they started to rise to theirfeet.

“The wolf’s nailed somebody,” Matt said.

A wild scream of fear and anguish hastened them.

“Bring a light!” Scott shouted, as he sprang outside.

Matt followed with the lamp, and by its light they saw a man lying on his backin the snow. His arms were folded, one above the other, across his face andthroat. Thus he was trying to shield himself from White Fang’s teeth. Andthere was need for it. White Fang was in a rage, wickedly making his attack onthe most vulnerable spot. From shoulder to wrist of the crossed arms, thecoat-sleeve, blue flannel shirt and undershirt were ripped in rags, while thearms themselves were terribly slashed and streaming blood.

All this the two men saw in the first instant. The next instant Weedon Scotthad White Fang by the throat and was dragging him clear. White Fang struggledand snarled, but made no attempt to bite, while he quickly quieted down at asharp word from the master.

Matt helped the man to his feet. As he arose he lowered his crossed arms,exposing the bestial face of Beauty Smith. The dog-musher let go of himprecipitately, with action similar to that of a man who has picked up livefire. Beauty Smith blinked in the lamplight and looked about him. He caughtsight of White Fang and terror rushed into his face.

At the same moment Matt noticed two objects lying in the snow. He held the lampclose to them, indicating them with his toe for his employer’sbenefit—a steel dog-chain and a stout club.

Weedon Scott saw and nodded. Not a word was spoken. The dog-musher laid hishand on Beauty Smith’s shoulder and faced him to the right about. No wordneeded to be spoken. Beauty Smith started.

In the meantime the love-master was patting White Fang and talking to him.

“Tried to steal you, eh? And you wouldn’t have it! Well, well, hemade a mistake, didn’t he?”

“Must ‘a’ thought he had hold of seventeen devils,” thedog-musher sniggered.

White Fang, still wrought up and bristling, growled and growled, the hairslowly lying down, the crooning note remote and dim, but growing in his throat.

PART V

CHAPTER I
THE LONG TRAIL

It was in the air. White Fang sensed the coming calamity, even before there wastangible evidence of it. In vague ways it was borne in upon him that a changewas impending. He knew not how nor why, yet he got his feel of the oncomingevent from the gods themselves. In ways subtler than they knew, they betrayedtheir intentions to the wolf-dog that haunted the cabin-stoop, and that, thoughhe never came inside the cabin, knew what went on inside their brains.

“Listen to that, will you!” the dog-musher exclaimed at supper onenight.

Weedon Scott listened. Through the door came a low, anxious whine, like asobbing under the breath that had just grown audible. Then came the long sniff,as White Fang reassured himself that his god was still inside and had not yettaken himself off in mysterious and solitary flight.

“I do believe that wolf’s on to you,” the dog-musher said.

Weedon Scott looked across at his companion with eyes that almost pleaded,though this was given the lie by his words.

“What the devil can I do with a wolf in California?” he demanded.

“That’s what I say,” Matt answered. “What the devil canyou do with a wolf in California?”

But this did not satisfy Weedon Scott. The other seemed to be judging him in anon-committal sort of way.

“White man’s dogs would have no show against him,” Scott wenton. “He’d kill them on sight. If he didn’t bankrupt me withdamaged suits, the authorities would take him away from me and electrocutehim.”

“He’s a downright murderer, I know,” was thedog-musher’s comment.

Weedon Scott looked at him suspiciously.

“It would never do,” he said decisively.

“It would never do!” Matt concurred. “Why you’d have tohire a man ’specially to take care of ’m.”

The other’s suspicion was allayed. He nodded cheerfully. In the silence thatfollowed, the low, half-sobbing whine was heard at the door and then the long,questing sniff.

“There’s no denyin’ he thinks a hell of a lot of you,”Matt said.

The other glared at him in sudden wrath. “Damn it all, man! I know my ownmind and what’s best!”

“I’m agreein’ with you, only . . . ”

“Only what?” Scott snapped out.

“Only . . . ” the dog-musher began softly, then changed his mindand betrayed a rising anger of his own. “Well, you needn’t get soall-fired het up about it. Judgin’ by your actions one’d think youdidn’t know your own mind.”

Weedon Scott debated with himself for a while, and then said more gently:“You are right, Matt. I don’t know my own mind, and that’swhat’s the trouble.”

“Why, it would be rank ridiculousness for me to take that dogalong,” he broke out after another pause.

“I’m agreein’ with you,” was Matt’s answer, andagain his employer was not quite satisfied with him.

“But how in the name of the great Sardanapolis he knows you’regoin’ is what gets me,” the dog-musher continued innocently.

“It’s beyond me, Matt,” Scott answered, with a mournful shakeof the head.

Then came the day when, through the open cabin door, White Fang saw the fatalgrip on the floor and the love-master packing things into it. Also, there werecomings and goings, and the erstwhile placid atmosphere of the cabin was vexedwith strange perturbations and unrest. Here was indubitable evidence. WhiteFang had already scented it. He now reasoned it. His god was preparing foranother flight. And since he had not taken him with him before, so, now, hecould look to be left behind.

That night he lifted the long wolf-howl. As he had howled, in his puppy days,when he fled back from the Wild to the village to find it vanished and naughtbut a rubbish-heap to mark the site of Grey Beaver’s tepee, so now hepointed his muzzle to the cold stars and told to them his woe.

Inside the cabin the two men had just gone to bed.

“He’s gone off his food again,” Matt remarked from his bunk.

There was a grunt from Weedon Scott’s bunk, and a stir of blankets.

“From the way he cut up the other time you went away, I wouldn’twonder this time but what he died.”

The blankets in the other bunk stirred irritably.

“Oh, shut up!” Scott cried out through the darkness. “You nagworse than a woman.”

“I’m agreein’ with you,” the dog-musher answered, andWeedon Scott was not quite sure whether or not the other had snickered.

The next day White Fang’s anxiety and restlessness were even morepronounced. He dogged his master’s heels whenever he left the cabin, andhaunted the front stoop when he remained inside. Through the open door he couldcatch glimpses of the luggage on the floor. The grip had been joined by twolarge canvas bags and a box. Matt was rolling the master’s blankets andfur robe inside a small tarpaulin. White Fang whined as he watched theoperation.

Later on two Indians arrived. He watched them closely as they shouldered theluggage and were led off down the hill by Matt, who carried the bedding and thegrip. But White Fang did not follow them. The master was still in the cabin.After a time, Matt returned. The master came to the door and called White Fanginside.

“You poor devil,” he said gently, rubbing White Fang’s earsand tapping his spine. “I’m hitting the long trail, old man, whereyou cannot follow. Now give me a growl—the last, good, good-byegrowl.”

But White Fang refused to growl. Instead, and after a wistful, searching look,he snuggled in, burrowing his head out of sight between the master’s armand body.

“There she blows!” Matt cried. From the Yukon arose the hoarsebellowing of a river steamboat. “You’ve got to cut it short. Besure and lock the front door. I’ll go out the back. Get a move on!”

The two doors slammed at the same moment, and Weedon Scott waited for Matt tocome around to the front. From inside the door came a low whining and sobbing.Then there were long, deep-drawn sniffs.

“You must take good care of him, Matt,” Scott said, as they starteddown the hill. “Write and let me know how he gets along.”

“Sure,” the dog-musher answered. “But listen to that, willyou!”

Both men stopped. White Fang was howling as dogs howl when their masters liedead. He was voicing an utter woe, his cry bursting upward in greatheart-breaking rushes, dying down into quavering misery, and bursting upwardagain with a rush upon rush of grief.

The Aurora was the first steamboat of the year for the Outside, and herdecks were jammed with prosperous adventurers and broken gold seekers, allequally as mad to get to the Outside as they had been originally to get to theInside. Near the gang-plank, Scott was shaking hands with Matt, who waspreparing to go ashore. But Matt’s hand went limp in the other’sgrasp as his gaze shot past and remained fixed on something behind him. Scottturned to see. Sitting on the deck several feet away and watching wistfully wasWhite Fang.

The dog-musher swore softly, in awe-stricken accents. Scott could only look inwonder.

“Did you lock the front door?” Matt demanded. The other nodded, andasked, “How about the back?”

“You just bet I did,” was the fervent reply.

White Fang flattened his ears ingratiatingly, but remained where he was, makingno attempt to approach.

“I’ll have to take ’m ashore with me.”

Matt made a couple of steps toward White Fang, but the latter slid away fromhim. The dog-musher made a rush of it, and White Fang dodged between the legsof a group of men. Ducking, turning, doubling, he slid about the deck, eludingthe other’s efforts to capture him.

But when the love-master spoke, White Fang came to him with prompt obedience.

“Won’t come to the hand that’s fed ’m all thesemonths,” the dog-musher muttered resentfully. “And you—youain’t never fed ’m after them first days of gettin’acquainted. I’m blamed if I can see how he works it out that you’rethe boss.”

Scott, who had been patting White Fang, suddenly bent closer and pointed outfresh-made cuts on his muzzle, and a gash between the eyes.

Matt bent over and passed his hand along White Fang’s belly.

“We plump forgot the window. He’s all cut an’ gougedunderneath. Must ‘a’ butted clean through it, b’gosh!”

But Weedon Scott was not listening. He was thinking rapidly. TheAurora’s whistle hooted a final announcement of departure. Menwere scurrying down the gang-plank to the shore. Matt loosened the bandana fromhis own neck and started to put it around White Fang’s. Scott grasped thedog-musher’s hand.

“Good-bye, Matt, old man. About the wolf—you needn’t write.You see, I’ve . . . !”

“What!” the dog-musher exploded. “You don’t mean to say. . .?”

“The very thing I mean. Here’s your bandana. I’ll write toyou about him.”

Matt paused halfway down the gang-plank.

“He’ll never stand the climate!” he shouted back.“Unless you clip ’m in warm weather!”

The gang-plank was hauled in, and the Aurora swung out from the bank.Weedon Scott waved a last good-bye. Then he turned and bent over White Fang,standing by his side.

“Now growl, damn you, growl,” he said, as he patted the responsivehead and rubbed the flattening ears.

CHAPTER II
THE SOUTHLAND

White Fang landed from the steamer in San Francisco. He was appalled. Deep inhim, below any reasoning process or act of consciousness, he had associatedpower with godhead. And never had the white men seemed such marvellous gods asnow, when he trod the slimy pavement of San Francisco. The log cabins he hadknown were replaced by towering buildings. The streets were crowded withperils—waggons, carts, automobiles; great, straining horses pulling hugetrucks; and monstrous cable and electric cars hooting and clanging through themidst, screeching their insistent menace after the manner of the lynxes he hadknown in the northern woods.

All this was the manifestation of power. Through it all, behind it all, wasman, governing and controlling, expressing himself, as of old, by his masteryover matter. It was colossal, stunning. White Fang was awed. Fear sat upon him.As in his cubhood he had been made to feel his smallness and puniness on theday he first came in from the Wild to the village of Grey Beaver, so now, inhis full-grown stature and pride of strength, he was made to feel small andpuny. And there were so many gods! He was made dizzy by the swarming of them.The thunder of the streets smote upon his ears. He was bewildered by thetremendous and endless rush and movement of things. As never before, he felthis dependence on the love-master, close at whose heels he followed, no matterwhat happened never losing sight of him.

But White Fang was to have no more than a nightmare vision of the city—anexperience that was like a bad dream, unreal and terrible, that haunted him forlong after in his dreams. He was put into a baggage-car by the master, chainedin a corner in the midst of heaped trunks and valises. Here a squat and brawnygod held sway, with much noise, hurling trunks and boxes about, dragging themin through the door and tossing them into the piles, or flinging them out ofthe door, smashing and crashing, to other gods who awaited them.

And here, in this inferno of luggage, was White Fang deserted by the master. Orat least White Fang thought he was deserted, until he smelled out themaster’s canvas clothes-bags alongside of him, and proceeded to mountguard over them.

“’Bout time you come,” growled the god of the car, an hourlater, when Weedon Scott appeared at the door. “That dog of yournwon’t let me lay a finger on your stuff.”

White Fang emerged from the car. He was astonished. The nightmare city wasgone. The car had been to him no more than a room in a house, and when he hadentered it the city had been all around him. In the interval the city haddisappeared. The roar of it no longer dinned upon his ears. Before him wassmiling country, streaming with sunshine, lazy with quietude. But he had littletime to marvel at the transformation. He accepted it as he accepted all theunaccountable doings and manifestations of the gods. It was their way.

There was a carriage waiting. A man and a woman approached the master. Thewoman’s arms went out and clutched the master around the neck—ahostile act! The next moment Weedon Scott had torn loose from the embrace andclosed with White Fang, who had become a snarling, raging demon.

“It’s all right, mother,” Scott was saying as he kept tighthold of White Fang and placated him. “He thought you were going to injureme, and he wouldn’t stand for it. It’s all right. It’s allright. He’ll learn soon enough.”

“And in the meantime I may be permitted to love my son when his dog isnot around,” she laughed, though she was pale and weak from the fright.

She looked at White Fang, who snarled and bristled and glared malevolently.

“He’ll have to learn, and he shall, without postponement,”Scott said.

He spoke softly to White Fang until he had quieted him, then his voice becamefirm.

“Down, sir! Down with you!”

This had been one of the things taught him by the master, and White Fangobeyed, though he lay down reluctantly and sullenly.

“Now, mother.”

Scott opened his arms to her, but kept his eyes on White Fang.

“Down!” he warned. “Down!”

White Fang, bristling silently, half-crouching as he rose, sank back andwatched the hostile act repeated. But no harm came of it, nor of the embracefrom the strange man-god that followed. Then the clothes-bags were taken intothe carriage, the strange gods and the love-master followed, and White Fangpursued, now running vigilantly behind, now bristling up to the running horsesand warning them that he was there to see that no harm befell the god theydragged so swiftly across the earth.

At the end of fifteen minutes, the carriage swung in through a stone gatewayand on between a double row of arched and interlacing walnut trees. On eitherside stretched lawns, their broad sweep broken here and there by greatsturdy-limbed oaks. In the near distance, in contrast with the young-green ofthe tended grass, sunburnt hay-fields showed tan and gold; while beyond werethe tawny hills and upland pastures. From the head of the lawn, on the firstsoft swell from the valley-level, looked down the deep-porched, many-windowedhouse.

Little opportunity was given White Fang to see all this. Hardly had thecarriage entered the grounds, when he was set upon by a sheep-dog, bright-eyed,sharp-muzzled, righteously indignant and angry. It was between him and themaster, cutting him off. White Fang snarled no warning, but his hair bristledas he made his silent and deadly rush. This rush was never completed. He haltedwith awkward abruptness, with stiff fore-legs bracing himself against hismomentum, almost sitting down on his haunches, so desirous was he of avoidingcontact with the dog he was in the act of attacking. It was a female, and thelaw of his kind thrust a barrier between. For him to attack her would requirenothing less than a violation of his instinct.

But with the sheep-dog it was otherwise. Being a female, she possessed no suchinstinct. On the other hand, being a sheep-dog, her instinctive fear of theWild, and especially of the wolf, was unusually keen. White Fang was to her awolf, the hereditary marauder who had preyed upon her flocks from the timesheep were first herded and guarded by some dim ancestor of hers. And so, as heabandoned his rush at her and braced himself to avoid the contact, she sprangupon him. He snarled involuntarily as he felt her teeth in his shoulder, butbeyond this made no offer to hurt her. He backed away, stiff-legged withself-consciousness, and tried to go around her. He dodged this way and that,and curved and turned, but to no purpose. She remained always between him andthe way he wanted to go.

“Here, Collie!” called the strange man in the carriage.

Weedon Scott laughed.

“Never mind, father. It is good discipline. White Fang will have to learnmany things, and it’s just as well that he begins now. He’ll adjusthimself all right.”

The carriage drove on, and still Collie blocked White Fang’s way. Hetried to outrun her by leaving the drive and circling across the lawn but sheran on the inner and smaller circle, and was always there, facing him with hertwo rows of gleaming teeth. Back he circled, across the drive to the otherlawn, and again she headed him off.

The carriage was bearing the master away. White Fang caught glimpses of itdisappearing amongst the trees. The situation was desperate. He essayed anothercircle. She followed, running swiftly. And then, suddenly, he turned upon her.It was his old fighting trick. Shoulder to shoulder, he struck her squarely.Not only was she overthrown. So fast had she been running that she rolledalong, now on her back, now on her side, as she struggled to stop, clawinggravel with her feet and crying shrilly her hurt pride and indignation.

White Fang did not wait. The way was clear, and that was all he had wanted. Shetook after him, never ceasing her outcry. It was the straightaway now, and whenit came to real running, White Fang could teach her things. She ranfrantically, hysterically, straining to the utmost, advertising the effort shewas making with every leap: and all the time White Fang slid smoothly away fromher silently, without effort, gliding like a ghost over the ground.

As he rounded the house to the porte-cochère, he came upon the carriage.It had stopped, and the master was alighting. At this moment, still running attop speed, White Fang became suddenly aware of an attack from the side. It wasa deer-hound rushing upon him. White Fang tried to face it. But he was goingtoo fast, and the hound was too close. It struck him on the side; and such washis forward momentum and the unexpectedness of it, White Fang was hurled to theground and rolled clear over. He came out of the tangle a spectacle ofmalignancy, ears flattened back, lips writhing, nose wrinkling, his teethclipping together as the fangs barely missed the hound’s soft throat.

The master was running up, but was too far away; and it was Collie that savedthe hound’s life. Before White Fang could spring in and deliver the fatalstroke, and just as he was in the act of springing in, Collie arrived. She hadbeen out-manoeuvred and out-run, to say nothing of her having beenunceremoniously tumbled in the gravel, and her arrival was like that of atornado—made up of offended dignity, justifiable wrath, and instinctivehatred for this marauder from the Wild. She struck White Fang at right anglesin the midst of his spring, and again he was knocked off his feet and rolledover.

The next moment the master arrived, and with one hand held White Fang, whilethe father called off the dogs.

“I say, this is a pretty warm reception for a poor lone wolf from theArctic,” the master said, while White Fang calmed down under hiscaressing hand. “In all his life he’s only been known once to gooff his feet, and here he’s been rolled twice in thirty seconds.”

The carriage had driven away, and other strange gods had appeared from out thehouse. Some of these stood respectfully at a distance; but two of them, women,perpetrated the hostile act of clutching the master around the neck. WhiteFang, however, was beginning to tolerate this act. No harm seemed to come ofit, while the noises the gods made were certainly not threatening. These godsalso made overtures to White Fang, but he warned them off with a snarl, and themaster did likewise with word of mouth. At such times White Fang leaned inclose against the master’s legs and received reassuring pats on the head.

The hound, under the command, “Dick! Lie down, sir!” had gone upthe steps and lain down to one side of the porch, still growling and keeping asullen watch on the intruder. Collie had been taken in charge by one of thewoman-gods, who held arms around her neck and petted and caressed her; butCollie was very much perplexed and worried, whining and restless, outraged bythe permitted presence of this wolf and confident that the gods were making amistake.

All the gods started up the steps to enter the house. White Fang followedclosely at the master’s heels. Dick, on the porch, growled, and WhiteFang, on the steps, bristled and growled back.

“Take Collie inside and leave the two of them to fight it out,”suggested Scott’s father. “After that they’ll befriends.”

“Then White Fang, to show his friendship, will have to be chief mournerat the funeral,” laughed the master.

The elder Scott looked incredulously, first at White Fang, then at Dick, andfinally at his son.

“You mean . . .?”

Weedon nodded his head. “I mean just that. You’d have a dead Dickinside one minute—two minutes at the farthest.”

He turned to White Fang. “Come on, you wolf. It’s you that’llhave to come inside.”

White Fang walked stiff-legged up the steps and across the porch, with tailrigidly erect, keeping his eyes on Dick to guard against a flank attack, and atthe same time prepared for whatever fierce manifestation of the unknown thatmight pounce out upon him from the interior of the house. But no thing of fearpounced out, and when he had gained the inside he scouted carefully around,looking at it and finding it not. Then he lay down with a contented grunt atthe master’s feet, observing all that went on, ever ready to spring tohis feet and fight for life with the terrors he felt must lurk under thetrap-roof of the dwelling.

CHAPTER III
THE GOD’S DOMAIN

Not only was White Fang adaptable by nature, but he had travelled much, andknew the meaning and necessity of adjustment. Here, in Sierra Vista, which wasthe name of Judge Scott’s place, White Fang quickly began to make himselfat home. He had no further serious trouble with the dogs. They knew more aboutthe ways of the Southland gods than did he, and in their eyes he had qualifiedwhen he accompanied the gods inside the house. Wolf that he was, andunprecedented as it was, the gods had sanctioned his presence, and they, thedogs of the gods, could only recognise this sanction.

Dick, perforce, had to go through a few stiff formalities at first, after whichhe calmly accepted White Fang as an addition to the premises. Had Dick had hisway, they would have been good friends; but White Fang was averse tofriendship. All he asked of other dogs was to be let alone. His whole life hehad kept aloof from his kind, and he still desired to keep aloof. Dick’sovertures bothered him, so he snarled Dick away. In the north he had learnedthe lesson that he must let the master’s dogs alone, and he did notforget that lesson now. But he insisted on his own privacy and self-seclusion,and so thoroughly ignored Dick that that good-natured creature finally gave himup and scarcely took as much interest in him as in the hitching-post near thestable.

Not so with Collie. While she accepted him because it was the mandate of thegods, that was no reason that she should leave him in peace. Woven into herbeing was the memory of countless crimes he and his had perpetrated against herancestry. Not in a day nor a generation were the ravaged sheepfolds to beforgotten. All this was a spur to her, pricking her to retaliation. She couldnot fly in the face of the gods who permitted him, but that did not prevent herfrom making life miserable for him in petty ways. A feud, ages old, was betweenthem, and she, for one, would see to it that he was reminded.

So Collie took advantage of her sex to pick upon White Fang and maltreat him.His instinct would not permit him to attack her, while her persistence wouldnot permit him to ignore her. When she rushed at him he turned hisfur-protected shoulder to her sharp teeth and walked away stiff-legged andstately. When she forced him too hard, he was compelled to go about in acircle, his shoulder presented to her, his head turned from her, and on hisface and in his eyes a patient and bored expression. Sometimes, however, a nipon his hind-quarters hastened his retreat and made it anything but stately. Butas a rule he managed to maintain a dignity that was almost solemnity. Heignored her existence whenever it was possible, and made it a point to keep outof her way. When he saw or heard her coming, he got up and walked off.

There was much in other matters for White Fang to learn. Life in the Northlandwas simplicity itself when compared with the complicated affairs of SierraVista. First of all, he had to learn the family of the master. In a way he wasprepared to do this. As Mit-sah and Kloo-kooch had belonged to Grey Beaver,sharing his food, his fire, and his blankets, so now, at Sierra Vista, belongedto the love-master all the denizens of the house.

But in this matter there was a difference, and many differences. Sierra Vistawas a far vaster affair than the tepee of Grey Beaver. There were many personsto be considered. There was Judge Scott, and there was his wife. There were themaster’s two sisters, Beth and Mary. There was his wife, Alice, and thenthere were his children, Weedon and Maud, toddlers of four and six. There wasno way for anybody to tell him about all these people, and of blood-ties andrelationship he knew nothing whatever and never would be capable of knowing.Yet he quickly worked it out that all of them belonged to the master. Then, byobservation, whenever opportunity offered, by study of action, speech, and thevery intonations of the voice, he slowly learned the intimacy and the degree offavour they enjoyed with the master. And by this ascertained standard, WhiteFang treated them accordingly. What was of value to the master he valued; whatwas dear to the master was to be cherished by White Fang and guarded carefully.

Thus it was with the two children. All his life he had disliked children. Hehated and feared their hands. The lessons were not tender that he had learnedof their tyranny and cruelty in the days of the Indian villages. When Weedonand Maud had first approached him, he growled warningly and looked malignant. Acuff from the master and a sharp word had then compelled him to permit theircaresses, though he growled and growled under their tiny hands, and in thegrowl there was no crooning note. Later, he observed that the boy and girl wereof great value in the master’s eyes. Then it was that no cuff nor sharpword was necessary before they could pat him.

Yet White Fang was never effusively affectionate. He yielded to themaster’s children with an ill but honest grace, and endured their foolingas one would endure a painful operation. When he could no longer endure, hewould get up and stalk determinedly away from them. But after a time, he greweven to like the children. Still he was not demonstrative. He would not go upto them. On the other hand, instead of walking away at sight of them, he waitedfor them to come to him. And still later, it was noticed that a pleased lightcame into his eyes when he saw them approaching, and that he looked after themwith an appearance of curious regret when they left him for other amusements.

All this was a matter of development, and took time. Next in his regard, afterthe children, was Judge Scott. There were two reasons, possibly, for this.First, he was evidently a valuable possession of the master’s, and next,he was undemonstrative. White Fang liked to lie at his feet on the wide porchwhen he read the newspaper, from time to time favouring White Fang with a lookor a word—untroublesome tokens that he recognised White Fang’spresence and existence. But this was only when the master was not around. Whenthe master appeared, all other beings ceased to exist so far as White Fang wasconcerned.

White Fang allowed all the members of the family to pet him and make much ofhim; but he never gave to them what he gave to the master. No caress of theirscould put the love-croon into his throat, and, try as they would, they couldnever persuade him into snuggling against them. This expression of abandon andsurrender, of absolute trust, he reserved for the master alone. In fact, henever regarded the members of the family in any other light than possessions ofthe love-master.

Also White Fang had early come to differentiate between the family and theservants of the household. The latter were afraid of him, while he merelyrefrained from attacking them. This because he considered that they werelikewise possessions of the master. Between White Fang and them existed aneutrality and no more. They cooked for the master and washed the dishes anddid other things just as Matt had done up in the Klondike. They were, in short,appurtenances of the household.

Outside the household there was even more for White Fang to learn. Themaster’s domain was wide and complex, yet it had its metes and bounds.The land itself ceased at the county road. Outside was the common domain of allgods—the roads and streets. Then inside other fences were the particulardomains of other gods. A myriad laws governed all these things and determinedconduct; yet he did not know the speech of the gods, nor was there any way forhim to learn save by experience. He obeyed his natural impulses until they ranhim counter to some law. When this had been done a few times, he learned thelaw and after that observed it.

But most potent in his education was the cuff of the master’s hand, thecensure of the master’s voice. Because of White Fang’s very greatlove, a cuff from the master hurt him far more than any beating Grey Beaver orBeauty Smith had ever given him. They had hurt only the flesh of him; beneaththe flesh the spirit had still raged, splendid and invincible. But with themaster the cuff was always too light to hurt the flesh. Yet it went deeper. Itwas an expression of the master’s disapproval, and White Fang’sspirit wilted under it.

In point of fact, the cuff was rarely administered. The master’s voicewas sufficient. By it White Fang knew whether he did right or not. By it hetrimmed his conduct and adjusted his actions. It was the compass by which hesteered and learned to chart the manners of a new land and life.

In the Northland, the only domesticated animal was the dog. All other animalslived in the Wild, and were, when not too formidable, lawful spoil for any dog.All his days White Fang had foraged among the live things for food. It did notenter his head that in the Southland it was otherwise. But this he was to learnearly in his residence in Santa Clara Valley. Sauntering around the corner ofthe house in the early morning, he came upon a chicken that had escaped fromthe chicken-yard. White Fang’s natural impulse was to eat it. A couple ofbounds, a flash of teeth and a frightened squawk, and he had scooped in theadventurous fowl. It was farm-bred and fat and tender; and White Fang lickedhis chops and decided that such fare was good.

Later in the day, he chanced upon another stray chicken near the stables. Oneof the grooms ran to the rescue. He did not know White Fang’s breed, sofor weapon he took a light buggy-whip. At the first cut of the whip, White Fangleft the chicken for the man. A club might have stopped White Fang, but not awhip. Silently, without flinching, he took a second cut in his forward rush,and as he leaped for the throat the groom cried out, “My God!” andstaggered backward. He dropped the whip and shielded his throat with his arms.In consequence, his forearm was ripped open to the bone.

The man was badly frightened. It was not so much White Fang’s ferocity asit was his silence that unnerved the groom. Still protecting his throat andface with his torn and bleeding arm, he tried to retreat to the barn. And itwould have gone hard with him had not Collie appeared on the scene. As she hadsaved Dick’s life, she now saved the groom’s. She rushed upon WhiteFang in frenzied wrath. She had been right. She had known better than theblundering gods. All her suspicions were justified. Here was the ancientmarauder up to his old tricks again.

The groom escaped into the stables, and White Fang backed away beforeCollie’s wicked teeth, or presented his shoulder to them and circledround and round. But Collie did not give over, as was her wont, after a decentinterval of chastisement. On the contrary, she grew more excited and angryevery moment, until, in the end, White Fang flung dignity to the winds andfrankly fled away from her across the fields.

“He’ll learn to leave chickens alone,” the master said.“But I can’t give him the lesson until I catch him in theact.”

Two nights later came the act, but on a more generous scale than the master hadanticipated. White Fang had observed closely the chicken-yards and the habitsof the chickens. In the night-time, after they had gone to roost, he climbed tothe top of a pile of newly hauled lumber. From there he gained the roof of achicken-house, passed over the ridgepole and dropped to the ground inside. Amoment later he was inside the house, and the slaughter began.

In the morning, when the master came out on to the porch, fifty white Leghornhens, laid out in a row by the groom, greeted his eyes. He whistled to himself,softly, first with surprise, and then, at the end, with admiration. His eyeswere likewise greeted by White Fang, but about the latter there were no signsof shame nor guilt. He carried himself with pride, as though, forsooth, he hadachieved a deed praiseworthy and meritorious. There was about him noconsciousness of sin. The master’s lips tightened as he faced thedisagreeable task. Then he talked harshly to the unwitting culprit, and in hisvoice there was nothing but godlike wrath. Also, he held White Fang’snose down to the slain hens, and at the same time cuffed him soundly.

White Fang never raided a chicken-roost again. It was against the law, and hehad learned it. Then the master took him into the chicken-yards. WhiteFang’s natural impulse, when he saw the live food fluttering about himand under his very nose, was to spring upon it. He obeyed the impulse, but waschecked by the master’s voice. They continued in the yards for half anhour. Time and again the impulse surged over White Fang, and each time, as heyielded to it, he was checked by the master’s voice. Thus it was helearned the law, and ere he left the domain of the chickens, he had learned toignore their existence.

“You can never cure a chicken-killer.” Judge Scott shook his headsadly at luncheon table, when his son narrated the lesson he had given WhiteFang. “Once they’ve got the habit and the taste of blood . ..” Again he shook his head sadly.

But Weedon Scott did not agree with his father. “I’ll tell you whatI’ll do,” he challenged finally. “I’ll lock White Fangin with the chickens all afternoon.”

“But think of the chickens,” objected the judge.

“And furthermore,” the son went on, “for every chicken hekills, I’ll pay you one dollar gold coin of the realm.”

“But you should penalise father, too,” interposed Beth.

Her sister seconded her, and a chorus of approval arose from around the table.Judge Scott nodded his head in agreement.

“All right.” Weedon Scott pondered for a moment. “And if, atthe end of the afternoon White Fang hasn’t harmed a chicken, for everyten minutes of the time he has spent in the yard, you will have to say to him,gravely and with deliberation, just as if you were sitting on the bench andsolemnly passing judgment, ‘White Fang, you are smarter than Ithought.’”

From hidden points of vantage the family watched the performance. But it was afizzle. Locked in the yard and there deserted by the master, White Fang laydown and went to sleep. Once he got up and walked over to the trough for adrink of water. The chickens he calmly ignored. So far as he was concerned theydid not exist. At four o’clock he executed a running jump, gained theroof of the chicken-house and leaped to the ground outside, whence he saunteredgravely to the house. He had learned the law. And on the porch, before thedelighted family, Judge Scott, face to face with White Fang, said slowly andsolemnly, sixteen times, “White Fang, you are smarter than Ithought.”

But it was the multiplicity of laws that befuddled White Fang and often broughthim into disgrace. He had to learn that he must not touch the chickens thatbelonged to other gods. Then there were cats, and rabbits, and turkeys; allthese he must let alone. In fact, when he had but partly learned the law, hisimpression was that he must leave all live things alone. Out in theback-pasture, a quail could flutter up under his nose unharmed. All tense andtrembling with eagerness and desire, he mastered his instinct and stood still.He was obeying the will of the gods.

And then, one day, again out in the back-pasture, he saw Dick start ajackrabbit and run it. The master himself was looking on and did not interfere.Nay, he encouraged White Fang to join in the chase. And thus he learned thatthere was no taboo on jackrabbits. In the end he worked out the complete law.Between him and all domestic animals there must be no hostilities. If notamity, at least neutrality must obtain. But the other animals—thesquirrels, and quail, and cottontails, were creatures of the Wild who had neveryielded allegiance to man. They were the lawful prey of any dog. It was onlythe tame that the gods protected, and between the tame deadly strife was notpermitted. The gods held the power of life and death over their subjects, andthe gods were jealous of their power.

Life was complex in the Santa Clara Valley after the simplicities of theNorthland. And the chief thing demanded by these intricacies of civilisationwas control, restraint—a poise of self that was as delicate as thefluttering of gossamer wings and at the same time as rigid as steel. Life had athousand faces, and White Fang found he must meet them all—thus, when hewent to town, in to San Jose, running behind the carriage or loafing about thestreets when the carriage stopped. Life flowed past him, deep and wide andvaried, continually impinging upon his senses, demanding of him instant andendless adjustments and correspondences, and compelling him, almost always, tosuppress his natural impulses.

There were butcher-shops where meat hung within reach. This meat he must nottouch. There were cats at the houses the master visited that must be let alone.And there were dogs everywhere that snarled at him and that he must not attack.And then, on the crowded sidewalks there were persons innumerable whoseattention he attracted. They would stop and look at him, point him out to oneanother, examine him, talk of him, and, worst of all, pat him. And theseperilous contacts from all these strange hands he must endure. Yet thisendurance he achieved. Furthermore, he got over being awkward andself-conscious. In a lofty way he received the attentions of the multitudes ofstrange gods. With condescension he accepted their condescension. On the otherhand, there was something about him that prevented great familiarity. Theypatted him on the head and passed on, contented and pleased with their owndaring.

But it was not all easy for White Fang. Running behind the carriage in theoutskirts of San Jose, he encountered certain small boys who made a practice offlinging stones at him. Yet he knew that it was not permitted him to pursue anddrag them down. Here he was compelled to violate his instinct ofself-preservation, and violate it he did, for he was becoming tame andqualifying himself for civilisation.

Nevertheless, White Fang was not quite satisfied with the arrangement. He hadno abstract ideas about justice and fair play. But there is a certain sense ofequity that resides in life, and it was this sense in him that resented theunfairness of his being permitted no defence against the stone-throwers. Heforgot that in the covenant entered into between him and the gods they werepledged to care for him and defend him. But one day the master sprang from thecarriage, whip in hand, and gave the stone-throwers a thrashing. After thatthey threw stones no more, and White Fang understood and was satisfied.

One other experience of similar nature was his. On the way to town, hangingaround the saloon at the cross-roads, were three dogs that made a practice ofrushing out upon him when he went by. Knowing his deadly method of fighting,the master had never ceased impressing upon White Fang the law that he must notfight. As a result, having learned the lesson well, White Fang was hard putwhenever he passed the cross-roads saloon. After the first rush, each time, hissnarl kept the three dogs at a distance but they trailed along behind, yelpingand bickering and insulting him. This endured for some time. The men at thesaloon even urged the dogs on to attack White Fang. One day they openly sickedthe dogs on him. The master stopped the carriage.

“Go to it,” he said to White Fang.

But White Fang could not believe. He looked at the master, and he looked at thedogs. Then he looked back eagerly and questioningly at the master.

The master nodded his head. “Go to them, old fellow. Eat them up.”

White Fang no longer hesitated. He turned and leaped silently among hisenemies. All three faced him. There was a great snarling and growling, aclashing of teeth and a flurry of bodies. The dust of the road arose in a cloudand screened the battle. But at the end of several minutes two dogs werestruggling in the dirt and the third was in full flight. He leaped a ditch,went through a rail fence, and fled across a field. White Fang followed,sliding over the ground in wolf fashion and with wolf speed, swiftly andwithout noise, and in the centre of the field he dragged down and slew the dog.

With this triple killing his main troubles with dogs ceased. The word went upand down the valley, and men saw to it that their dogs did not molest theFighting Wolf.

CHAPTER IV
THE CALL OF KIND

The months came and went. There was plenty of food and no work in theSouthland, and White Fang lived fat and prosperous and happy. Not alone was hein the geographical Southland, for he was in the Southland of life. Humankindness was like a sun shining upon him, and he flourished like a flowerplanted in good soil.

And yet he remained somehow different from other dogs. He knew the law evenbetter than did the dogs that had known no other life, and he observed the lawmore punctiliously; but still there was about him a suggestion of lurkingferocity, as though the Wild still lingered in him and the wolf in him merelyslept.

He never chummed with other dogs. Lonely he had lived, so far as his kind wasconcerned, and lonely he would continue to live. In his puppyhood, under thepersecution of Lip-lip and the puppy-pack, and in his fighting days with BeautySmith, he had acquired a fixed aversion for dogs. The natural course of hislife had been diverted, and, recoiling from his kind, he had clung to thehuman.

Besides, all Southland dogs looked upon him with suspicion. He aroused in themtheir instinctive fear of the Wild, and they greeted him always with snarl andgrowl and belligerent hatred. He, on the other hand, learned that it was notnecessary to use his teeth upon them. His naked fangs and writhing lips wereuniformly efficacious, rarely failing to send a bellowing on-rushing dog backon its haunches.

But there was one trial in White Fang’s life—Collie. She never gavehim a moment’s peace. She was not so amenable to the law as he. Shedefied all efforts of the master to make her become friends with White Fang.Ever in his ears was sounding her sharp and nervous snarl. She had neverforgiven him the chicken-killing episode, and persistently held to the beliefthat his intentions were bad. She found him guilty before the act, and treatedhim accordingly. She became a pest to him, like a policeman following himaround the stable and the hounds, and, if he even so much as glanced curiouslyat a pigeon or chicken, bursting into an outcry of indignation and wrath. Hisfavourite way of ignoring her was to lie down, with his head on his fore-paws,and pretend sleep. This always dumfounded and silenced her.

With the exception of Collie, all things went well with White Fang. He hadlearned control and poise, and he knew the law. He achieved a staidness, andcalmness, and philosophic tolerance. He no longer lived in a hostileenvironment. Danger and hurt and death did not lurk everywhere about him. Intime, the unknown, as a thing of terror and menace ever impending, faded away.Life was soft and easy. It flowed along smoothly, and neither fear nor foelurked by the way.

He missed the snow without being aware of it. “An unduly longsummer,” would have been his thought had he thought about it; as it was,he merely missed the snow in a vague, subconscious way. In the same fashion,especially in the heat of summer when he suffered from the sun, he experiencedfaint longings for the Northland. Their only effect upon him, however, was tomake him uneasy and restless without his knowing what was the matter.

White Fang had never been very demonstrative. Beyond his snuggling and thethrowing of a crooning note into his love-growl, he had no way of expressinghis love. Yet it was given him to discover a third way. He had always beensusceptible to the laughter of the gods. Laughter had affected him withmadness, made him frantic with rage. But he did not have it in him to be angrywith the love-master, and when that god elected to laugh at him in agood-natured, bantering way, he was nonplussed. He could feel the pricking andstinging of the old anger as it strove to rise up in him, but it strove againstlove. He could not be angry; yet he had to do something. At first he wasdignified, and the master laughed the harder. Then he tried to be moredignified, and the master laughed harder than before. In the end, the masterlaughed him out of his dignity. His jaws slightly parted, his lips lifted alittle, and a quizzical expression that was more love than humour came into hiseyes. He had learned to laugh.

Likewise he learned to romp with the master, to be tumbled down and rolledover, and be the victim of innumerable rough tricks. In return he feignedanger, bristling and growling ferociously, and clipping his teeth together insnaps that had all the seeming of deadly intention. But he never forgothimself. Those snaps were always delivered on the empty air. At the end of sucha romp, when blow and cuff and snap and snarl were fast and furious, they wouldbreak off suddenly and stand several feet apart, glaring at each other. Andthen, just as suddenly, like the sun rising on a stormy sea, they would beginto laugh. This would always culminate with the master’s arms going aroundWhite Fang’s neck and shoulders while the latter crooned and growled hislove-song.

But nobody else ever romped with White Fang. He did not permit it. He stood onhis dignity, and when they attempted it, his warning snarl and bristling manewere anything but playful. That he allowed the master these liberties was noreason that he should be a common dog, loving here and loving there,everybody’s property for a romp and good time. He loved with single heartand refused to cheapen himself or his love.

The master went out on horseback a great deal, and to accompany him was one ofWhite Fang’s chief duties in life. In the Northland he had evidenced hisfealty by toiling in the harness; but there were no sleds in the Southland, nordid dogs pack burdens on their backs. So he rendered fealty in the new way, byrunning with the master’s horse. The longest day never played White Fangout. His was the gait of the wolf, smooth, tireless and effortless, and at theend of fifty miles he would come in jauntily ahead of the horse.

It was in connection with the riding, that White Fang achieved one other modeof expression—remarkable in that he did it but twice in all his life. Thefirst time occurred when the master was trying to teach a spirited thoroughbredthe method of opening and closing gates without the rider’s dismounting.Time and again and many times he ranged the horse up to the gate in the effortto close it and each time the horse became frightened and backed and plungedaway. It grew more nervous and excited every moment. When it reared, the masterput the spurs to it and made it drop its fore-legs back to earth, whereupon itwould begin kicking with its hind-legs. White Fang watched the performance withincreasing anxiety until he could contain himself no longer, when he sprang infront of the horse and barked savagely and warningly.

Though he often tried to bark thereafter, and the master encouraged him, hesucceeded only once, and then it was not in the master’s presence. Ascamper across the pasture, a jackrabbit rising suddenly under thehorse’s feet, a violent sheer, a stumble, a fall to earth, and a brokenleg for the master, was the cause of it. White Fang sprang in a rage at thethroat of the offending horse, but was checked by the master’s voice.

“Home! Go home!” the master commanded when he had ascertained hisinjury.

White Fang was disinclined to desert him. The master thought of writing a note,but searched his pockets vainly for pencil and paper. Again he commanded WhiteFang to go home.

The latter regarded him wistfully, started away, then returned and whinedsoftly. The master talked to him gently but seriously, and he cocked his ears,and listened with painful intentness.

“That’s all right, old fellow, you just run along home,” ranthe talk. “Go on home and tell them what’s happened to me. Homewith you, you wolf. Get along home!”

White Fang knew the meaning of “home,” and though he did notunderstand the remainder of the master’s language, he knew it was hiswill that he should go home. He turned and trotted reluctantly away. Then hestopped, undecided, and looked back over his shoulder.

“Go home!” came the sharp command, and this time he obeyed.

The family was on the porch, taking the cool of the afternoon, when White Fangarrived. He came in among them, panting, covered with dust.

“Weedon’s back,” Weedon’s mother announced.

The children welcomed White Fang with glad cries and ran to meet him. Heavoided them and passed down the porch, but they cornered him against arocking-chair and the railing. He growled and tried to push by them. Theirmother looked apprehensively in their direction.

“I confess, he makes me nervous around the children,” she said.“I have a dread that he will turn upon them unexpectedly some day.”

Growling savagely, White Fang sprang out of the corner, overturning the boy andthe girl. The mother called them to her and comforted them, telling them not tobother White Fang.

“A wolf is a wolf!” commented Judge Scott. “There is notrusting one.”

“But he is not all wolf,” interposed Beth, standing for her brotherin his absence.

“You have only Weedon’s opinion for that,” rejoined thejudge. “He merely surmises that there is some strain of dog in WhiteFang; but as he will tell you himself, he knows nothing about it. As for hisappearance—”

He did not finish his sentence. White Fang stood before him, growling fiercely.

“Go away! Lie down, sir!” Judge Scott commanded.

White Fang turned to the love-master’s wife. She screamed with fright ashe seized her dress in his teeth and dragged on it till the frail fabric toreaway. By this time he had become the centre of interest.

He had ceased from his growling and stood, head up, looking into their faces.His throat worked spasmodically, but made no sound, while he struggled with allhis body, convulsed with the effort to rid himself of the incommunicablesomething that strained for utterance.

“I hope he is not going mad,” said Weedon’s mother. “Itold Weedon that I was afraid the warm climate would not agree with an Arcticanimal.”

“He’s trying to speak, I do believe,” Beth announced.

At this moment speech came to White Fang, rushing up in a great burst ofbarking.

“Something has happened to Weedon,” his wife said decisively.

They were all on their feet now, and White Fang ran down the steps, lookingback for them to follow. For the second and last time in his life he had barkedand made himself understood.

After this event he found a warmer place in the hearts of the Sierra Vistapeople, and even the groom whose arm he had slashed admitted that he was a wisedog even if he was a wolf. Judge Scott still held to the same opinion, andproved it to everybody’s dissatisfaction by measurements and descriptionstaken from the encyclopaedia and various works on natural history.

The days came and went, streaming their unbroken sunshine over the Santa ClaraValley. But as they grew shorter and White Fang’s second winter in theSouthland came on, he made a strange discovery. Collie’s teeth were nolonger sharp. There was a playfulness about her nips and a gentleness thatprevented them from really hurting him. He forgot that she had made life aburden to him, and when she disported herself around him he responded solemnly,striving to be playful and becoming no more than ridiculous.

One day she led him off on a long chase through the back-pasture land into thewoods. It was the afternoon that the master was to ride, and White Fang knewit. The horse stood saddled and waiting at the door. White Fang hesitated. Butthere was that in him deeper than all the law he had learned, than the customsthat had moulded him, than his love for the master, than the very will to liveof himself; and when, in the moment of his indecision, Collie nipped him andscampered off, he turned and followed after. The master rode alone that day;and in the woods, side by side, White Fang ran with Collie, as his mother,Kiche, and old One Eye had run long years before in the silent Northlandforest.

CHAPTER V
THE SLEEPING WOLF

It was about this time that the newspapers were full of the daring escape of aconvict from San Quentin prison. He was a ferocious man. He had been ill-madein the making. He had not been born right, and he had not been helped any bythe moulding he had received at the hands of society. The hands of society areharsh, and this man was a striking sample of its handiwork. He was abeast—a human beast, it is true, but nevertheless so terrible a beastthat he can best be characterised as carnivorous.

In San Quentin prison he had proved incorrigible. Punishment failed to breakhis spirit. He could die dumb-mad and fighting to the last, but he could notlive and be beaten. The more fiercely he fought, the more harshly societyhandled him, and the only effect of harshness was to make him fiercer.Strait-jackets, starvation, and beatings and clubbings were the wrong treatmentfor Jim Hall; but it was the treatment he received. It was the treatment he hadreceived from the time he was a little pulpy boy in a San Franciscoslum—soft clay in the hands of society and ready to be formed intosomething.

It was during Jim Hall’s third term in prison that he encountered a guardthat was almost as great a beast as he. The guard treated him unfairly, liedabout him to the warden, lost his credits, persecuted him. The differencebetween them was that the guard carried a bunch of keys and a revolver. JimHall had only his naked hands and his teeth. But he sprang upon the guard oneday and used his teeth on the other’s throat just like any jungle animal.

After this, Jim Hall went to live in the incorrigible cell. He lived therethree years. The cell was of iron, the floor, the walls, the roof. He neverleft this cell. He never saw the sky nor the sunshine. Day was a twilight andnight was a black silence. He was in an iron tomb, buried alive. He saw nohuman face, spoke to no human thing. When his food was shoved in to him, hegrowled like a wild animal. He hated all things. For days and nights hebellowed his rage at the universe. For weeks and months he never made a sound,in the black silence eating his very soul. He was a man and a monstrosity, asfearful a thing of fear as ever gibbered in the visions of a maddened brain.

And then, one night, he escaped. The warders said it was impossible, butnevertheless the cell was empty, and half in half out of it lay the body of adead guard. Two other dead guards marked his trail through the prison to theouter walls, and he had killed with his hands to avoid noise.

He was armed with the weapons of the slain guards—a live arsenal thatfled through the hills pursued by the organised might of society. A heavy priceof gold was upon his head. Avaricious farmers hunted him with shot-guns. Hisblood might pay off a mortgage or send a son to college. Public-spiritedcitizens took down their rifles and went out after him. A pack of bloodhoundsfollowed the way of his bleeding feet. And the sleuth-hounds of the law, thepaid fighting animals of society, with telephone, and telegraph, and specialtrain, clung to his trail night and day.

Sometimes they came upon him, and men faced him like heroes, or stampededthrough barbed-wire fences to the delight of the commonwealth reading theaccount at the breakfast table. It was after such encounters that the dead andwounded were carted back to the towns, and their places filled by men eager forthe man-hunt.

And then Jim Hall disappeared. The bloodhounds vainly quested on the losttrail. Inoffensive ranchers in remote valleys were held up by armed men andcompelled to identify themselves; while the remains of Jim Hall were discoveredon a dozen mountain-sides by greedy claimants for blood-money.

In the meantime the newspapers were read at Sierra Vista, not so much withinterest as with anxiety. The women were afraid. Judge Scott pooh-poohed andlaughed, but not with reason, for it was in his last days on the bench that JimHall had stood before him and received sentence. And in open court-room, beforeall men, Jim Hall had proclaimed that the day would come when he would wreakvengeance on the Judge that sentenced him.

For once, Jim Hall was right. He was innocent of the crime for which he wassentenced. It was a case, in the parlance of thieves and police, of“rail-roading.” Jim Hall was being “rail-roaded” toprison for a crime he had not committed. Because of the two prior convictionsagainst him, Judge Scott imposed upon him a sentence of fifty years.

Judge Scott did not know all things, and he did not know that he was party to apolice conspiracy, that the evidence was hatched and perjured, that Jim Hallwas guiltless of the crime charged. And Jim Hall, on the other hand, did notknow that Judge Scott was merely ignorant. Jim Hall believed that the judgeknew all about it and was hand in glove with the police in the perpetration ofthe monstrous injustice. So it was, when the doom of fifty years of livingdeath was uttered by Judge Scott, that Jim Hall, hating all things in thesociety that misused him, rose up and raged in the court-room until draggeddown by half a dozen of his blue-coated enemies. To him, Judge Scott was thekeystone in the arch of injustice, and upon Judge Scott he emptied the vials ofhis wrath and hurled the threats of his revenge yet to come. Then Jim Hall wentto his living death . . . and escaped.

Of all this White Fang knew nothing. But between him and Alice, themaster’s wife, there existed a secret. Each night, after Sierra Vista hadgone to bed, she rose and let in White Fang to sleep in the big hall. Now WhiteFang was not a house-dog, nor was he permitted to sleep in the house; so eachmorning, early, she slipped down and let him out before the family was awake.

On one such night, while all the house slept, White Fang awoke and lay veryquietly. And very quietly he smelled the air and read the message it bore of astrange god’s presence. And to his ears came sounds of the strangegod’s movements. White Fang burst into no furious outcry. It was not hisway. The strange god walked softly, but more softly walked White Fang, for hehad no clothes to rub against the flesh of his body. He followed silently. Inthe Wild he had hunted live meat that was infinitely timid, and he knew theadvantage of surprise.

The strange god paused at the foot of the great staircase and listened, andWhite Fang was as dead, so without movement was he as he watched and waited. Upthat staircase the way led to the love-master and to the love-master’sdearest possessions. White Fang bristled, but waited. The strange god’sfoot lifted. He was beginning the ascent.

Then it was that White Fang struck. He gave no warning, with no snarlanticipated his own action. Into the air he lifted his body in the spring thatlanded him on the strange god’s back. White Fang clung with his fore-pawsto the man’s shoulders, at the same time burying his fangs into the backof the man’s neck. He clung on for a moment, long enough to drag the godover backward. Together they crashed to the floor. White Fang leaped clear,and, as the man struggled to rise, was in again with the slashing fangs.

Sierra Vista awoke in alarm. The noise from downstairs was as that of a scoreof battling fiends. There were revolver shots. A man’s voice screamedonce in horror and anguish. There was a great snarling and growling, and overall arose a smashing and crashing of furniture and glass.

But almost as quickly as it had arisen, the commotion died away. The strugglehad not lasted more than three minutes. The frightened household clustered atthe top of the stairway. From below, as from out an abyss of blackness, came upa gurgling sound, as of air bubbling through water. Sometimes this gurglebecame sibilant, almost a whistle. But this, too, quickly died down and ceased.Then naught came up out of the blackness save a heavy panting of some creaturestruggling sorely for air.

Weedon Scott pressed a button, and the staircase and downstairs hall wereflooded with light. Then he and Judge Scott, revolvers in hand, cautiouslydescended. There was no need for this caution. White Fang had done his work. Inthe midst of the wreckage of overthrown and smashed furniture, partly on hisside, his face hidden by an arm, lay a man. Weedon Scott bent over, removed thearm and turned the man’s face upward. A gaping throat explained themanner of his death.

“Jim Hall,” said Judge Scott, and father and son lookedsignificantly at each other.

Then they turned to White Fang. He, too, was lying on his side. His eyes wereclosed, but the lids slightly lifted in an effort to look at them as they bentover him, and the tail was perceptibly agitated in a vain effort to wag. WeedonScott patted him, and his throat rumbled an acknowledging growl. But it was aweak growl at best, and it quickly ceased. His eyelids drooped and went shut,and his whole body seemed to relax and flatten out upon the floor.

“He’s all in, poor devil,” muttered the master.

“We’ll see about that,” asserted the Judge, as he started forthe telephone.

“Frankly, he has one chance in a thousand,” announced the surgeon,after he had worked an hour and a half on White Fang.

Dawn was breaking through the windows and dimming the electric lights. With theexception of the children, the whole family was gathered about the surgeon tohear his verdict.

“One broken hind-leg,” he went on. “Three broken ribs, one atleast of which has pierced the lungs. He has lost nearly all the blood in hisbody. There is a large likelihood of internal injuries. He must have beenjumped upon. To say nothing of three bullet holes clear through him. One chancein a thousand is really optimistic. He hasn’t a chance in tenthousand.”

“But he mustn’t lose any chance that might be of help tohim,” Judge Scott exclaimed. “Never mind expense. Put him under theX-ray—anything. Weedon, telegraph at once to San Francisco for DoctorNichols. No reflection on you, doctor, you understand; but he must have theadvantage of every chance.”

The surgeon smiled indulgently. “Of course I understand. He deserves allthat can be done for him. He must be nursed as you would nurse a human being, asick child. And don’t forget what I told you about temperature.I’ll be back at ten o’clock again.”

White Fang received the nursing. Judge Scott’s suggestion of a trainednurse was indignantly clamoured down by the girls, who themselves undertook thetask. And White Fang won out on the one chance in ten thousand denied him bythe surgeon.

The latter was not to be censured for his misjudgment. All his life he hadtended and operated on the soft humans of civilisation, who lived shelteredlives and had descended out of many sheltered generations. Compared with WhiteFang, they were frail and flabby, and clutched life without any strength intheir grip. White Fang had come straight from the Wild, where the weak perishearly and shelter is vouchsafed to none. In neither his father nor his motherwas there any weakness, nor in the generations before them. A constitution ofiron and the vitality of the Wild were White Fang’s inheritance, and heclung to life, the whole of him and every part of him, in spirit and in flesh,with the tenacity that of old belonged to all creatures.

Bound down a prisoner, denied even movement by the plaster casts and bandages,White Fang lingered out the weeks. He slept long hours and dreamed much, andthrough his mind passed an unending pageant of Northland visions. All theghosts of the past arose and were with him. Once again he lived in the lairwith Kiche, crept trembling to the knees of Grey Beaver to tender hisallegiance, ran for his life before Lip-lip and all the howling bedlam of thepuppy-pack.

He ran again through the silence, hunting his living food through the months offamine; and again he ran at the head of the team, the gut-whips of Mit-sah andGrey Beaver snapping behind, their voices crying “Ra! Raa!” whenthey came to a narrow passage and the team closed together like a fan to gothrough. He lived again all his days with Beauty Smith and the fights he hadfought. At such times he whimpered and snarled in his sleep, and they thatlooked on said that his dreams were bad.

But there was one particular nightmare from which he suffered—theclanking, clanging monsters of electric cars that were to him colossalscreaming lynxes. He would lie in a screen of bushes, watching for a squirrelto venture far enough out on the ground from its tree-refuge. Then, when hesprang out upon it, it would transform itself into an electric car, menacingand terrible, towering over him like a mountain, screaming and clanging andspitting fire at him. It was the same when he challenged the hawk down out ofthe sky. Down out of the blue it would rush, as it dropped upon him changingitself into the ubiquitous electric car. Or again, he would be in the pen ofBeauty Smith. Outside the pen, men would be gathering, and he knew that a fightwas on. He watched the door for his antagonist to enter. The door would open,and thrust in upon him would come the awful electric car. A thousand times thisoccurred, and each time the terror it inspired was as vivid and great as ever.

Then came the day when the last bandage and the last plaster cast were takenoff. It was a gala day. All Sierra Vista was gathered around. The master rubbedhis ears, and he crooned his love-growl. The master’s wife called him the“Blessed Wolf,” which name was taken up with acclaim and all thewomen called him the Blessed Wolf.

He tried to rise to his feet, and after several attempts fell down fromweakness. He had lain so long that his muscles had lost their cunning, and allthe strength had gone out of them. He felt a little shame because of hisweakness, as though, forsooth, he were failing the gods in the service he owedthem. Because of this he made heroic efforts to arise and at last he stood onhis four legs, tottering and swaying back and forth.

“The Blessed Wolf!” chorused the women.

Judge Scott surveyed them triumphantly.

“Out of your own mouths be it,” he said. “Just as I contendedright along. No mere dog could have done what he did. He’s a wolf.”

“A Blessed Wolf,” amended the Judge’s wife.

“Yes, Blessed Wolf,” agreed the Judge. “And henceforth thatshall be my name for him.”

“He’ll have to learn to walk again,” said the surgeon;“so he might as well start in right now. It won’t hurt him. Takehim outside.”

And outside he went, like a king, with all Sierra Vista about him and tendingon him. He was very weak, and when he reached the lawn he lay down and restedfor a while.

Then the procession started on, little spurts of strength coming into WhiteFang’s muscles as he used them and the blood began to surge through them.The stables were reached, and there in the doorway, lay Collie, a half-dozenpudgy puppies playing about her in the sun.

White Fang looked on with a wondering eye. Collie snarled warningly at him, andhe was careful to keep his distance. The master with his toe helped onesprawling puppy toward him. He bristled suspiciously, but the master warned himthat all was well. Collie, clasped in the arms of one of the women, watched himjealously and with a snarl warned him that all was not well.

The puppy sprawled in front of him. He cocked his ears and watched itcuriously. Then their noses touched, and he felt the warm little tongue of thepuppy on his jowl. White Fang’s tongue went out, he knew not why, and helicked the puppy’s face.

Hand-clapping and pleased cries from the gods greeted the performance. He wassurprised, and looked at them in a puzzled way. Then his weakness asserteditself, and he lay down, his ears cocked, his head on one side, as he watchedthe puppy. The other puppies came sprawling toward him, to Collie’s greatdisgust; and he gravely permitted them to clamber and tumble over him. Atfirst, amid the applause of the gods, he betrayed a trifle of his oldself-consciousness and awkwardness. This passed away as the puppies’antics and mauling continued, and he lay with half-shut patient eyes, drowsingin the sun.