A small number of white men lived in Fort Yukon. These men hadbeen long in the country. They called themselves Sour-doughs, and tookgreat pride in so classifying themselves. For other men, new in the land,they felt nothing but disdain. The men who came ashore from the steamerswere newcomers. They were known as CHECHAQUOS, and they alwayswilted at the application of the name. They made their bread with baking-powder. This was the invidious distinction between them and the Sour-doughs, who, forsooth, made their bread from sour-dough because theyhad no baking-powder.
All of which is neither here nor there. The men in the fort disdainedthe newcomers and enjoyed seeing them come to grief. Especially did theyenjoy the havoc worked amongst the newcomers' dogs by White Fang andhis disreputable gang. When a steamer arrived, the men of the fort made ita point always to come down to the bank and see the fun. They lookedforward to it with as much anticipation as did the Indian dogs, while theywere not slow to appreciate the savage and crafty part played by WhiteFang.
But there was one man amongst them who particularly enjoyed thesport. He would come running at the first sound of a steamboat's whistle;and when the last fight was over and White Fang and the pack hadscattered, he would return slowly to the fort, his face heavy with regret.
Sometimes, when a soft southland dog went down, shrieking its death-cryunder the fangs of the pack, this man would be unable to contain himself,and would leap into the air and cry out with delight. And always he had asharp and covetous eye for White Fang.
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 hisnaming. He was pre-eminently unbeautiful. Nature had been niggardlywith him. He was a small man to begin with; and upon his meagre framewas deposited an even more strikingly meagre head. Its apex might belikened to a point. In fact, in his boyhood, before he had been namedBeauty by his fellows, he had been called "Pinhead."Backward, from the apex, his head slanted down to his neck andforward it slanted uncompromisingly to meet a low and remarkably wideforehead. Beginning here, as though regretting her parsimony, Nature hadspread his features with a lavish hand. His eyes were large, and betweenthem was the distance of two eyes. His face, in relation to the rest of him,was prodigious. In order to discover the necessary area, Nature had givenhim an enormous prognathous jaw. It was wide and heavy, and protrudedoutward and down until it seemed to rest on his chest. Possibly thisappearance was due to the weariness of the slender neck, unable properlyto support so great a burden.
This jaw gave the impression of ferocious determination. Butsomething lacked. Perhaps it was from excess. Perhaps the jaw was toolarge. At any rate, it was a lie. Beauty Smith was known far and wide asthe weakest of weak-kneed and snivelling cowards. To complete hisdescription, his teeth were large and yellow, while the two eye-teeth,larger than their fellows, showed under his lean lips like fangs. His eyeswere yellow and muddy, as though Nature had run short on pigments andsqueezed together the dregs of all her tubes. It was the same with his hair,sparse and irregular of growth, muddy-yellow and dirty-yellow, rising onhis head and sprouting out of his face in unexpected tufts and bunches, inappearance like clumped and wind-blown grain.
In short, Beauty Smith was a monstrosity, and the blame of it layelsewhere. He was not responsible. The clay of him had been so mouldedin the making. He did the cooking for the other men in the fort, the dish-washing and the drudgery. They did not despise him. Rather did theytolerate him in a broad human way, as one tolerates any creature evillytreated in the making. Also, they feared him. His cowardly rages madethem dread a shot in the back or poison in their coffee. But somebody hadto do the cooking, and whatever else his shortcomings, Beauty Smithcould cook.
This was the man that looked at White Fang, delighted in his ferociousprowess, and desired to possess him. He made overtures to White Fangfrom the first. White Fang began by ignoring him. Later on, when theovertures became more insistent, White Fang bristled and bared his teethand backed away. He did not like the man. The feel of him was bad. Hesensed the evil in him, and feared the extended hand and the attempts atsoft-spoken speech. Because of all this, he hated the man.
With the simpler creatures, good and bad are things simply understood.
The good stands for all things that bring easement and satisfaction andsurcease from pain. Therefore, the good is liked. The bad stands for allthings that are fraught with discomfort, menace, and hurt, and is hatedaccordingly. White Fang's feel of Beauty Smith was bad. From the man'sdistorted body and twisted mind, in occult ways, like mists rising frommalarial marshes, came emanations of the unhealth within. Not byreasoning, not by the five senses alone, but by other and remoter anduncharted senses, came the feeling to White Fang that the man wasominous with evil, pregnant with hurtfulness, and therefore a thing bad,and wisely to be hated.
White Fang was in Grey Beaver's camp when Beauty Smith firstvisited it. At the faint sound of his distant feet, before he came in sight,White Fang knew who was coming and began to bristle. He had beenlying down in an abandon of comfort, but he arose quickly, and, as theman arrived, slid away in true wolf-fashion to the edge of the camp. Hedid not know what they said, but he could see the man and Grey Beavertalking together. Once, the man pointed at him, and White Fang snarledback as though the hand were just descending upon him instead of being,as it was, fifty feet away. The man laughed at this; and White Fang slunkaway to the sheltering woods, his head turned to observe as he glidedsoftly over the ground.
Grey Beaver refused to sell the dog. He had grown rich with histrading and stood in need of nothing. Besides, White Fang was a valuableanimal, the strongest sled-dog he had ever owned, and the best leader.
Furthermore, there was no dog like him on the Mackenzie nor the Yukon.
He could fight. He killed other dogs as easily as men killed mosquitoes.
(Beauty Smith's eyes lighted up at this, and he licked his thin lips with aneager tongue). No, White Fang was not for sale at any price.
But Beauty Smith knew the ways of Indians. He visited Grey Beaver'scamp often, and hidden under his coat was always a black bottle or so.
One of the potencies of whisky is the breeding of thirst. Grey Beaver gotthe thirst. His fevered membranes and burnt stomach began to clamour formore and more of the scorching fluid; while his brain, thrust all awry bythe unwonted stimulant, permitted him to go any length to obtain it. Themoney he had received for his furs and mittens and moccasins began to go.
It went faster and faster, and the shorter his money-sack grew, the shortergrew his temper.
In the end his money and goods and temper were all gone. Nothingremained to him but his thirst, a prodigious possession in itself that grewmore prodigious with every sober breath he drew. Then it was that BeautySmith had talk with him again about the sale of White Fang; but this timethe price offered was in bottles, not dollars, and Grey Beaver's ears weremore 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 asigh of content. The dreaded white god was not there. For days hismanifestations of desire to lay hands on him had been growing moreinsistent, and during that time White Fang had been compelled to avoidthe camp. He did not know what evil was threatened by those insistenthands. He knew only that they did threaten evil of some sort, and that itwas best for him to keep out of their reach.
But scarcely had he lain down when Grey Beaver staggered over tohim and tied a leather thong around his neck. He sat down beside WhiteFang, holding the end of the thong in his hand. In the other hand he held abottle, which, from time to time, was inverted above his head to theaccompaniment of gurgling noises.
An hour of this passed, when the vibrations of feet in contact with theground foreran the one who approached. White Fang heard it first, and hewas bristling with recognition while Grey Beaver still nodded stupidly.
White Fang tried to draw the thong softly out of his master's hand; but therelaxed fingers closed tightly and Grey Beaver roused himself.
Beauty Smith strode into camp and stood over White Fang. He snarledsoftly up at the thing of fear, watching keenly the deportment of the hands.
One hand extended outward and began to descend upon his head. His softsnarl grew tense and harsh. The hand continued slowly to descend, whilehe crouched beneath it, eyeing it malignantly, his snarl growing shorterand shorter as, with quickening breath, it approached its culmination.
Suddenly he snapped, striking with his fangs like a snake. The hand wasjerked back, and the teeth came together emptily with a sharp click.
Beauty Smith was frightened and angry. Grey Beaver clouted White Fangalongside the head, so that he cowered down close to the earth inrespectful obedience.
White Fang's suspicious eyes followed every movement. He sawBeauty Smith go away and return with a stout club. Then the end of thethong was given over to him by Grey Beaver. Beauty Smith started towalk away. The thong grew taut. White Fang resisted it. Grey Beaverclouted him right and left to make him get up and follow. He obeyed, butwith a rush, hurling himself upon the stranger who was dragging himaway. Beauty Smith did not jump away. He had been waiting for this. Heswung the club smartly, stopping the rush midway and smashing WhiteFang down upon the ground. Grey Beaver laughed and nodded approval.
Beauty Smith tightened the thong again, and White Fang crawled limplyand dizzily to his feet.
He did not rush a second time. One smash from the club was sufficientto convince him that the white god knew how to handle it, and he was toowise to fight the inevitable. So he followed morosely at Beauty Smith'sheels, his tail between his legs, yet snarling softly under his breath. ButBeauty Smith kept a wary eye on him, and the club was held always readyto strike.
At the fort Beauty Smith left him securely tied and went in to bed.
White Fang waited an hour. Then he applied his teeth to the thong, and inthe space of ten seconds was free. He had wasted no time with his teeth.
There had been no useless gnawing. The thong was cut across, diagonally,almost as clean as though done by a knife. White Fang looked up at thefort, at the same time bristling and growling. Then he turned and trottedback to Grey Beaver's camp. He owed no allegiance to this strange andterrible god. He had given himself to Grey Beaver, and to Grey Beaver heconsidered he still belonged.
But what had occurred before was repeated - with a difference. GreyBeaver again made him fast with a thong, and in the morning turned himover to Beauty Smith. And here was where the difference came in. BeautySmith gave him a beating. Tied securely, White Fang could only ragefutilely and endure the punishment. Club and whip were both used uponhim, and he experienced the worst beating he had ever received in his life.
Even the big beating given him in his puppyhood by Grey Beaver wasmild compared with this.
Beauty Smith enjoyed the task. He delighted in it. He gloated over hisvictim, and his eyes flamed dully, as he swung the whip or club andlistened to White Fang's cries of pain and to his helpless bellows andsnarls. For Beauty Smith was cruel in the way that cowards are cruel.
Cringing and snivelling himself before the blows or angry speech of a man,he revenged himself, in turn, upon creatures weaker than he. All life likespower, and Beauty Smith was no exception. Denied the expression ofpower amongst his own kind, he fell back upon the lesser creatures andthere vindicated the life that was in him. But Beauty Smith had not createdhimself, and no blame was to be attached to him. He had come into theworld with a twisted body and a brute intelligence. This had constitutedthe clay of him, and it had not been kindly moulded by the world.
White Fang knew why he was being beaten. When Grey Beaver tiedthe thong around his neck, and passed the end of the thong into BeautySmith's keeping, White Fang knew that it was his god's will for him to gowith Beauty Smith. And when Beauty Smith left him tied outside the fort,he knew that it was Beauty Smith's will that he should remain there.
Therefore, he had disobeyed the will of both the gods, and earned theconsequent punishment. He had seen dogs change owners in the past, andhe had seen the runaways beaten as he was being beaten. He was wise, andyet in the nature of him there were forces greater than wisdom. One ofthese was fidelity. He did not love Grey Beaver, yet, even in the face of hiswill and his anger, he was faithful to him. He could not help it. Thisfaithfulness was a quality of the clay that composed him. It was the qualitythat was peculiarly the possession of his kind; the quality that set apart hisspecies from all other species; the quality that has enabled the wolf and thewild dog to come in from the open and be the companions of man.
After the beating, White Fang was dragged back to the fort. But thistime Beauty Smith left him tied with a stick. One does not give up a godeasily, and so with White Fang. Grey Beaver was his own particular god,and, in spite of Grey Beaver's will, White Fang still clung to him andwould not give him up. Grey Beaver had betrayed and forsaken him, butthat had no effect upon him. Not for nothing had he surrendered himselfbody and soul to Grey Beaver. There had been no reservation on WhiteFang's part, and the bond was not to be broken easily.
So, in the night, when the men in the fort were asleep, White Fangapplied his teeth to the stick that held him. The wood was seasoned anddry, and it was tied so closely to his neck that he could scarcely get histeeth to it. It was only by the severest muscular exertion and neck-archingthat he succeeded in getting the wood between his teeth, and barelybetween his teeth at that; and it was only by the exercise of an immensepatience, extending through many hours, that he succeeded in gnawingthrough the stick. This was something that dogs were not supposed to do.
It was unprecedented. But White Fang did it, trotting away from the fort inthe early morning, with the end of the stick hanging to his neck.
He was wise. But had he been merely wise he would not have goneback to Grey Beaver who had already twice betrayed him. But there washis faithfulness, and he went back to be betrayed yet a third time. Again heyielded to the tying of a thong around his neck by Grey Beaver, and againBeauty Smith came to claim him. And this time he was beaten even moreseverely than before.
Grey Beaver looked on stolidly while the white man wielded the whip.
He gave no protection. It was no longer his dog. When the beating wasover White Fang was sick. A soft southland dog would have died under it,but not he. His school of life had been sterner, and he was himself ofsterner stuff. He had too great vitality. His clutch on life was too strong.
But he was very sick. At first he was unable to drag himself along, andBeauty Smith had to wait half-an-hour for him. And then, blind andreeling, he followed at Beauty Smith's heels back to the fort.
But now he was tied with a chain that defied his teeth, and he strove invain, by lunging, to draw the staple from the timber into which it wasdriven. After a few days, sober and bankrupt, Grey Beaver departed up thePorcupine on his long journey to the Mackenzie. White Fang remained onthe Yukon, the property of a man more than half mad and all brute. Butwhat is a dog to know in its consciousness of madness? To White Fang,Beauty Smith was a veritable, if terrible, god. He was a mad god at best,but White Fang knew nothing of madness; he knew only that he mustsubmit to the will of this new master, obey his every whim and fancy.
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