The spring of the year was at hand when Grey Beaver finished his longjourney. It was April, and White Fang was a year old when he pulled intothe home villages and was loosed from the harness by Mit-sah. Though along way from his full growth, White Fang, next to Lip-lip, was the largestyearling in the village. Both from his father, the wolf, and from Kiche, hehad inherited stature and strength, and already he was measuring upalongside the full-grown dogs. But he had not yet grown compact. Hisbody was slender and rangy, and his strength more stringy than massive,His coat was the true wolf-grey, and to all appearances he was true wolfhimself. The quarter-strain of dog he had inherited from Kiche had left nomark on him physically, though it had played its part in his mental make- up.
He wandered through the village, recognising with staid satisfactionthe various gods he had known before the long journey. Then there werethe dogs, puppies growing up like himself, and grown dogs that did notlook so large and formidable as the memory pictures he retained of them.
Also, he stood less in fear of them than formerly, stalking among themwith a certain careless ease that was as new to him as it was enjoyable.
There was Baseek, a grizzled old fellow that in his younger days hadbut to uncover his fangs to send White Fang cringing and crouching to theright about. From him White Fang had learned much of his owninsignificance; and from him he was now to learn much of the change anddevelopment that had taken place in himself. While Baseek had beengrowing weaker with age, White Fang had been growing stronger withyouth.
It was at the cutting-up of a moose, fresh-killed, that White Fanglearned of the changed relations in which he stood to the dog- world. Hehad got for himself a hoof and part of the shin-bone, to which quite a bit ofmeat was attached. Withdrawn from the immediate scramble of the otherdogs - in fact out of sight behind a thicket - he was devouring his prize,when Baseek rushed in upon him. Before he knew what he was doing, hehad slashed the intruder twice and sprung clear. Baseek was surprised bythe other's temerity and swiftness of attack. He stood, gazing stupidlyacross at White Fang, the raw, red shin-bone between them.
Baseek was old, and already he had come to know the increasingvalour of the dogs it had been his wont to bully. Bitter experiences these,which, perforce, he swallowed, calling upon all his wisdom to cope withthem. In the old days he would have sprung upon White Fang in a fury ofrighteous wrath. But now his waning powers would not permit such acourse. He bristled fiercely and looked ominously across the shin-bone atWhite Fang. And White Fang, resurrecting quite a deal of the old awe,seemed to wilt and to shrink in upon himself and grow small, as he castabout in his mind for a way to beat a retreat not too inglorious.
And right here Baseek erred. Had he contented himself with lookingfierce and ominous, all would have been well. White Fang, on the verge ofretreat, would have retreated, leaving the meat to him. But Baseek did notwait. He considered the victory already his and stepped forward to themeat. As he bent his head carelessly to smell it, White Fang bristledslightly. Even then it was not too late for Baseek to retrieve the situation.
Had he merely stood over the meat, head up and glowering, White Fangwould ultimately have slunk away. But the fresh meat was strong inBaseek's nostrils, and greed urged him to take a bite of it.
This was too much for White Fang. Fresh upon his months of masteryover his own team-mates, it was beyond his self-control to stand idly bywhile another devoured the meat that belonged to him. He struck, after hiscustom, without warning. With the first slash, Baseek's right ear wasripped into ribbons. He was astounded at the suddenness of it. But morethings, and most grievous ones, were happening with equal suddenness.
He was knocked off his feet. His throat was bitten. While he wasstruggling to his feet the young dog sank teeth twice into his shoulder. Theswiftness of it was bewildering. He made a futile rush at White Fang,clipping the empty air with an outraged snap. The next moment his no sewas laid open, and he was staggering backward away from the meat.
The situation was now reversed. White Fang stood over the shin- bone,bristling and menacing, while Baseek stood a little way off, preparing toretreat. He dared not risk a fight with this young lightning-flash, and againhe knew, and more bitterly, the enfeeblement of oncoming age. Hisattempt to maintain his dignity was heroic. Calmly turning his back uponyoung dog and shin-bone, as though both were beneath his notice andunworthy of his consideration, he stalked grandly away. Nor, until well outof sight, did he stop to lick his bleeding wounds.
The effect on White Fang was to give him a greater faith in himself,and a greater pride. He walked less softly among the grown dogs; hisattitude toward them was less compromising. Not that he went out of hisway looking for trouble. Far from it. But upon his way he demandedconsideration. He stood upon his right to go his way unmolested and togive trail to no dog. He had to be taken into account, that was all. He wasno longer to be disregarded and ignored, as was the lot of puppies, and ascontinued to be the lot of the puppies that were his team-mates. They gotout of the way, gave trail to the grown dogs, and gave up meat to themunder compulsion. But White Fang, uncompanionable, solitary, morose,scarcely looking to right or left, redoubtable, forbidding of aspect, remoteand alien, was accepted as an equal by his puzzled elders. They quicklylearned to leave him alone, neither venturing hostile acts nor makingovertures of friendliness. If they left him alone, he left them alone - a stateof affairs that they found, after a few encounters, to be pre- eminentlydesirable.
In midsummer White Fang had an experience. Trotting along in hissilent way to investigate a new tepee which had been erected on the edgeof the village while he was away with the hunters after moose, he camefull upon Kiche. He paused and looked at her. He remembered her vaguely,but he REMEMBERED her, and that was more than could be said for her.
She lifted her lip at him in the old snarl of menace, and his memorybecame clear. His forgotten cubhood, all that was associated with thatfamiliar snarl, rushed back to him. Before he had known the gods, she hadbeen to him the centre-pin of the universe. The old familiar feelings of thattime came back upon him, surged up within him. He bounded towards herjoyously, and she met him with shrewd fangs that laid his cheek open tothe bone. He did not understand. He backed away, bewildered andpuzzled.
But it was not Kiche's fault. A wolf-mother was not made to rememberher cubs of a year or so before. So she did not remember White Fang. Hewas a strange animal, an intruder; and her present litter of puppies gaveher the right to resent such intrusion.
One of the puppies sprawled up to White Fang. They were half-brothers, only they did not know it. White Fang sniffed the puppycuriously, whereupon Kiche rushed upon him, gashing is face a secondtime. He backed farther away. All the old memories and associations dieddown again and passed into the grave from which they had beenresurrected. He looked at Kiche licking her puppy and stopping now andthen to snarl at him. She was without value to him. He had learned to getalong without her. Her meaning was forgotten. There was no place for herin his scheme of things, as there was no place for him in hers.
He was still standing, stupid and bewildered, the memories forgotten,wondering what it was all about, when Kiche attacked him a third time,intent on driving him away altogether from the vicinity. And White Fangallowed himself to be driven away. This was a female of his kind, and itwas a law of his kind that the males must not fight the females. He did notknow anything about this law, for it was no generalisation of the mind, nota something acquired by experience of the world. He knew it as a secretprompting, as an urge of instinct - of the same instinct that made him howlat the moon and stars of nights, and that made him fear death and theunknown.
The months went by. White Fang grew stronger, heavier, and morecompact, while his character was developing along the lines laid down byhis heredity and his environment. His heredity was a life- stuff that may belikened to clay. It possessed many possibilities, was capable of beingmoulded into many different forms. Environment served to model the clay,to give it a particular form. Thus, had White Fang never come in to thefires of man, the Wild would have moulded him into a true wolf. But thegods had given him a different environment, and he was moulded into adog that was rather wolfish, but that was 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 particularshape. There was no escaping it. He was becoming more morose, moreuncompanionable, more solitary, more ferocious; while the dogs werelearning more and more that it was better to be at peace with him than atwar, and Grey Beaver was coming to prize him more greatly with thepassage of each day.
White Fang, seeming to sum up strength in all his qualities,nevertheless suffered from one besetting weakness. He could not standbeing laughed at. The laughter of men was a hateful thing. They mightlaugh among themselves about anything they pleased except himself, andhe did not mind. But the moment laughter was turned upon him he wouldfly into a most terrible rage. Grave, dignified, sombre, a laugh made himfrantic to ridiculousness. It so outraged him and upset him that for hourshe would behave like a demon. And woe to the dog that at such times ranfoul of him. He knew the law too well to take it out of Grey Beaver;behind Grey Beaver were a club and godhead. But behind the dogs therewas nothing but space, and into this space they flew when White Fangcame on 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 forsooktheir accustomed track. Moose were scarce, the rabbits almost disappeared,hunting and preying animals perished. Denied their usual food-supply,weakened by hunger, they fell upon and devoured one another. Only thestrong survived. White Fang's gods were always hunting animals. The oldand the weak of them died of hunger. There was wailing in the village,where the women and children went without in order that what little theyhad might go into the bellies of the lean and hollow-eyed hunters who trodthe forest in the vain pursuit of meat.
To such extremity were the gods driven that they ate the soft- tannedleather of their mocassins and mittens, while the dogs ate the harnesses offtheir backs and the very whip-lashes. Also, the dogs ate one another, andalso the gods ate the dogs. The weakest and the more worthless were eatenfirst. The dogs that still lived, looked on and understood. A few of theboldest and wisest forsook the fires of the gods, which had now become ashambles, and fled into the forest, where, in the end, they starved to deathor were eaten by wolves.
In this time of misery, White Fang, too, stole away into the woods. Hewas better fitted for the life than the other dogs, for he had the training ofhis cubhood to guide him. Especially adept did he become in stalkingsmall living things. He would lie concealed for hours, following everymovement of a cautious tree-squirrel, waiting, with a patience as huge asthe hunger he suffered from, until the squirrel ventured out upon theground. Even then, White Fang was not premature. He waited until he wassure of striking before the squirrel could gain a tree-refuge. Then, and notuntil then, would he flash from his hiding-place, a grey projectile,incredibly swift, never failing its mark - the fleeing squirrel that fled notfast enough.
Successful as he was with squirrels, there was one difficulty thatprevented him from living and growing fat on them. There were notenough squirrels. So he was driven to hunt still smaller things. So acutedid his hunger become at times that he was not above rooting out wood-mice from their burrows in the ground. Nor did he scorn to do battle with aweasel as hungry as himself and many times more ferocious. In the worstpinches of the famine he stole back to the fires of the gods. But he did notgo into the fires. He lurked in the forest, avoiding discovery and robbingthe 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 weaknessand of shortness of breath.
One day While Fang encountered a young wolf, gaunt and scrawny,loose-jointed with famine. Had he not been hungry himself, White Fangmight have gone with him and eventually found his way into the packamongst his wild brethren. As it was, he ran the young wolf down andkilled and ate him.
Fortune seemed to favour him. Always, when hardest pressed for food,he found something to kill. Again, when he was weak, it was his luck thatnone of the larger preying animals chanced upon him. Thus, he was strongfrom the two days' eating a lynx had afforded him when the hungry wolf-pack ran full tilt upon him. It was a long, cruel chase, but he was betternourished than they, and in the end outran them. And not only did heoutrun them, but, circling widely back on his track, he gathered in one ofhis exhausted pursuers.
After that he left that part of the country and journeyed over to thevalley wherein he had been born. Here, in the old lair, he encounteredKiche.
Up to her old tricks, she, too, had fled the inhospitable fires of thegods and gone back to her old refuge to give birth to her young. Of thislitter but one remained alive when White Fang came upon the scene, andthis one was not destined to live long. Young life had little chance in sucha 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 theturning to the left, where he found the lair of the lynx with whom hismother and he had fought long before. Here, in the abandoned lair, hesettled down and rested for a day.
During the early summer, in the last days of the famine, he met Lip-lip,who had likewise taken to the woods, where he had eked out a miserableexistence.
White Fang came upon him unexpectedly. Trotting in oppositedirections along the base of a high bluff, they rounded a corner of rock andfound themselves face to face. They paused with instant alarm, and lookedat each other suspiciously.
White Fang was in splendid condition. His hunting had been good, andfor a week he had eaten his fill. He was even gorged from his latest kill.
But in the moment he looked at Lip-lip his hair rose on end all along hisback. It was an involuntary bristling on his part, the physical state that inthe past had always accompanied the mental state produced in him by Lip-lip's bullying and persecution. As in the past he had bristled and snarled atsight of Lip-lip, so now, and automatically, he bristled and snarled. He didnot waste any time. The thing was done thoroughly and with despatch.
Lip-lip essayed to back away, but White Fang struck him hard, shoulder toshoulder. Lip-lip was overthrown and rolled upon his back. White Fang'steeth drove into the scrawny throat. There was a death-struggle, duringwhich White Fang walked around, stiff- legged and observant. Then heresumed his course and trotted on along the base of the bluff.
One day, not long after, he came to the edge of the forest, where anarrow stretch of open land sloped down to the Mackenzie. He had beenover this ground before, when it was bare, but now a village occupied it.
Still hidden amongst the trees, he paused to study the situation. Sights andsounds and scents were familiar to him. It was the old village changed to anew place. But sights and sounds and smells were different from those hehad last had when he fled away from it. There was no whimpering norwailing. Contented sounds saluted his ear, and when he heard the angryvoice of a woman he knew it to be the anger that proceeds from a fullstomach. And there was a smell in the air of fish. There was food. Thefamine was gone. He came out boldly from the forest and trotted intocamp straight to Grey Beaver's tepee. Grey Beaver was not there; butKloo-kooch welcomed him with glad cries and the whole of a fresh-caughtfish, and he lay down to wait Grey Beaver's coming.
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