White Fang
The cub’s shoulder was stiff and sore, and for some time he limped from
the terrible slash he had received. But the world now seemed changed.
He went about in it with greater confidence, with a feeling of prowess
that had not been his in the days before the battle with the lynx. He
had looked upon life in a more ferocious aspect; he had fought; he had
buried his teeth in the flesh of a foe; and he had survived. And
because of all this, he carried himself more boldly, with a touch of
defiance that was new in him. He was no longer afraid of minor things,
and much of his timidity had vanished, though the unknown never ceased
to press upon him with its mysteries and terrors, intangible and
ever-menacing.
He began to accompany his mother on the meat-trail, and he saw much of
the killing of meat and began to play his part in it. And in his own
dim way he learned the law of meat. There were two kinds of life—his
own kind and the other kind. His own kind included his mother and
himself. The other kind included all live things that moved. But the
other kind was divided. One portion was what his own kind killed and
ate. This portion was composed of the non-killers and the small
killers. The other portion killed and ate his own kind, or was killed
and eaten by his own kind. And out of this classification arose the
law. The aim of life was meat. Life itself was meat. Life lived on
life. There were the eaters and the eaten. The law was: EAT OR BE
EATEN. He did not formulate the law in clear, set terms and moralise
about it. He did not even 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
ptarmigan chicks. The hawk had eaten the ptarmigan-mother. The hawk
would also have eaten him. Later, when he had grown more formidable, he
wanted to eat the hawk. He had eaten the lynx kitten. The lynx-mother
would have eaten him had she not herself been killed and eaten. And so
it went. The law was being lived about him by all live things, and he
himself was part and parcel of the law. He was a killer. His only food
was meat, live meat, that ran away swiftly before him, or flew into the
air, or climbed trees, or hid in the ground, or faced him and fought
with him, or turned the tables and ran after him.
Had the cub thought in man-fashion, he might have epitomised life as a
voracious appetite and the world as a place wherein ranged a multitude
of appetites, pursuing and being pursued, hunting and being hunted,
eating and being eaten, all in blindness and confusion, with violence
and disorder, a chaos 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 wide vision. He was single-purposed, and entertained but one
thought or desire at a time. Besides the law of meat, there were a
myriad other and lesser laws for him to learn and obey. The world was
filled with surprise. The stir of the life that was in him, the play of
his muscles, was an unending happiness. To run down meat was to
experience thrills and elations. His rages and battles were pleasures.
Terror itself, and the mystery of the unknown, led to his living.
And there were easements and satisfactions. To have a full stomach, to
doze lazily in the sunshine—such things were remuneration in full for
his ardours and toils, while his ardours and tolls were in themselves
self-remunerative. They were expressions of life, and life is always
happy when it is expressing itself. So the cub had no quarrel with his
hostile environment. 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. He had left the cave and run down to the stream to drink. It
might have been that he took no notice because he was heavy with sleep.
(He had been out all night on the meat-trail, and had but just then
awakened.) And his carelessness might have been due to the familiarity
of the trail to the pool. He had travelled it often, and nothing had
ever happened on it.
He went down past the blasted pine, crossed the open space, and trotted
in amongst 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 he had never seen before. It was his first glimpse of
mankind. But at the sight of him 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 to dash wildly away, had there not suddenly and for the first time
arisen in him another and counter instinct. A great awe descended upon
him. He was beaten down to movelessness by an overwhelming sense of his
own weakness and littleness. 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
dim ways he recognised in man the animal that had fought itself to
primacy over the other animals of the Wild. Not alone out of his own
eyes, but out of the eyes of all his ancestors was the cub now looking
upon man—out of eyes that had circled in the darkness around countless
winter camp-fires, that had peered from safe distances and from the
hearts of thickets at the strange, two-legged animal that was lord over
living things. The spell of the cub’s heritage was upon him, the fear
and the respect born of the centuries of struggle and the accumulated
experience of the generations. The heritage was too compelling for 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 the submission that his kind had proffered from the first
time a wolf came in to sit by man’s fire and be made warm.
One of the Indians arose and walked over to him and stooped above him.
The cub cowered closer to the ground. It was the unknown, objectified
at last, in concrete flesh and blood, bending over him and reaching
down to seize hold of him. His hair bristled involuntarily; his lips
writhed back and his little fangs were bared. The hand, poised like
doom above him, hesitated, and the man spoke 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. As the hand descended closer and closer, there raged within the
cub a battle of the instincts. He experienced two great impulsions—to
yield and to fight. The resulting action was a compromise. He did both.
He yielded till the hand almost touched him. Then he fought, his teeth
flashing in a snap that sank them into the hand. The next moment he
received a clout alongside the head that knocked him over on his side.
Then all fight fled out of him. His puppyhood and the instinct of
submission took charge of him. He sat up on his haunches and ki-yi’d.
But the man whose hand he had bitten was angry. The cub received a
clout on the other side of his head. Whereupon he sat up and ki-yi’d
louder than ever.
The four Indians laughed more loudly, while even the man who had been
bitten began to laugh. They surrounded the cub and laughed at him,
while he wailed out his terror and his hurt. In the midst of it, he
heard something. The Indians heard it too. But the cub knew what it
was, and with a last, long wail that had in it more of triumph than
grief, he ceased his noise and waited for the coming of his mother, of
his ferocious and indomitable mother who fought and killed all things
and was never afraid. She was snarling as she ran. She had heard the
cry of her cub and was dashing to save him.
She bounded in amongst them, her anxious and militant motherhood making
her anything but a pretty sight. But to the cub the spectacle of her
protective rage was pleasing. He uttered a glad little cry and bounded
to meet her, while the man-animals went back hastily several steps. The
she-wolf stood over against her cub, facing the men, with bristling
hair, a snarl rumbling deep in her throat. Her face was distorted and
malignant with menace, even the bridge of 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!” was what
he uttered. It was an exclamation of surprise. The cub felt his mother
wilting at the sound.
“Kiche!” the man cried again, this time with sharpness and authority.
And then the cub saw his mother, the she-wolf, the fearless one,
crouching down till her belly touched the ground, whimpering, wagging
her tail, making peace signs. The cub could not understand. He was
appalled. The awe of man rushed over 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 she only crouched closer. She did not snap, nor threaten to snap.
The other men came up, and surrounded her, and felt her, and pawed her,
which actions she made no attempt to resent. They were greatly excited,
and made many noises with their mouths. These noises were not
indication of danger, the cub decided, as he crouched near his mother
still bristling from time to time but doing his best to submit.
“It is not strange,” an Indian was saying. “Her father was a wolf. It
is true, her mother was a dog; but did not my brother tie her out in
the woods all of three nights in the mating season? Therefore was the
father of Kiche a wolf.”
“It is a year, Grey Beaver, since she ran away,” spoke a second Indian.
“It is not strange, Salmon Tongue,” Grey Beaver answered. “It was 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 his hand
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 to administer a clout. Whereupon the cub covered its fangs, and
sank down submissively, while the hand, returning, rubbed behind his
ears, and up and down his back.
“This be the sign of it,” Grey Beaver went on. “It is plain that his
mother is Kiche. But his father was a wolf. Wherefore is there in him
little 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 is not my brother dead?”
The cub, who had thus received a name in the world, lay and watched.
For a time the man-animals continued to make their mouth-noises. Then
Grey Beaver took a knife from a sheath that hung around his neck, and
went into the thicket and cut a stick. White Fang watched him. He
notched the stick at each end and in the notches fastened strings of
raw-hide. One string he tied around the throat of Kiche. Then he led
her to a small pine, around which he tied the other string.
White Fang followed and lay down beside her. Salmon Tongue’s hand
reached out to him and rolled him over on his back. Kiche looked on
anxiously. White Fang felt fear mounting in him again. He could not
quite suppress a snarl, but he 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 was ridiculous and ungainly, lying
there on his back with legs sprawling in the air. Besides, it was a
position of such utter helplessness that White Fang’s whole nature
revolted against it. He could do nothing to defend himself. If this
man-animal intended harm, White Fang knew that he could not escape it.
How could he spring away with his four legs in the air above him? Yet