White Fang
the laughter that sank even deeper, and hurt in the spirit of him. And
he fled to Kiche, raging at the end of her stick like an animal gone
mad—to Kiche, the one creature in the world who was not laughing at
him.
Twilight drew down and night came on, and White Fang lay by his
mother’s side. His nose and tongue still hurt, but he was perplexed by
a greater trouble. He was homesick. He felt a vacancy in him, a need
for the hush and quietude 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 making noises and irritations. And there were
the dogs, ever squabbling and bickering, bursting into uproars and
creating confusions. The restful loneliness of the only life he had
known was gone. Here the very air was palpitant with life. It hummed
and buzzed unceasingly. Continually changing its intensity and abruptly
variant in pitch, it impinged on his nerves and senses, made him
nervous and restless and worried him with a perpetual imminence of
happening.
He watched the man-animals coming and going and moving about the camp.
In fashion distantly resembling the way men look upon the gods they
create, so looked White Fang upon the man-animals before him. They were
superior creatures, of a verity, gods. To his dim comprehension they
were as much wonder-workers as gods are to men. They were creatures of
mastery, possessing all manner of unknown and impossible potencies,
overlords of the alive and the not alive—making obey that which moved,
imparting movement to that which did not move, and making life,
sun-coloured and biting life, to grow out of dead 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
that Kiche 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 the man-animals, but familiarity did not breed contempt. The
more he came to know them, the more they vindicated their superiority,
the more they displayed their mysterious powers, the greater loomed
their god-likeness.
To man has been given the grief, often, of seeing his gods overthrown
and his altars crumbling; but to the wolf and the wild dog that have
come in to crouch at man’s feet, this grief has never come. Unlike man,
whose gods are of the unseen and the overguessed, vapours and mists of
fancy eluding the garmenture of reality, wandering wraiths of desired
goodness and power, intangible out-croppings of self into the realm of
spirit—unlike man, the wolf and the wild dog that have come in to the
fire find their gods in the living flesh, solid to the touch, occupying
earth-space and requiring time for the accomplishment of their ends and
their existence. No effort of faith is necessary to believe in such a
god; no effort of will can possibly induce disbelief in such a god.
There is no getting away from it. There it stands, on its two
hind-legs, club in hand, immensely potential, passionate and wrathful
and loving, god and mystery and power all wrapped up and around by
flesh that bleeds 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
and unescapable. As his mother, Kiche, had rendered her allegiance to
them at the first cry of her name, so he was beginning to render his
allegiance. He gave them the trail as a privilege indubitably theirs.
When they walked, he got out of 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 of theirs was power to
enforce that wish, power that hurt, power that expressed itself 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 to command. His body was theirs to maul, to stamp upon, to
tolerate. Such was the lesson 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 he disliked it in the learning
of it, unknown to himself he was learning to like it. It was a placing
of his destiny in another’s hands, a shifting of the responsibilities
of existence. This in itself was compensation, for it is always 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 his memories of the Wild. There were days when he crept to
the edge of the forest and stood and listened to something calling him
far and away. And always he returned, restless and uncomfortable, to
whimper softly and wistfully at Kiche’s side and to lick her face with
eager, questioning tongue.
White Fang learned rapidly the ways of the camp. He knew the injustice
and greediness of the older dogs when meat or fish was thrown out to be
eaten. He came to know that men were more just, children more cruel,
and women more kindly and more likely to toss him a bit of meat or
bone. And after two or three painful adventures with the mothers of
part-grown puppies, he came into the knowledge that it was always good
policy to let such mothers alone, to keep away 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 had selected White Fang for his special object of persecution.
White Fang fought willingly enough, but he was outclassed. His enemy
was too big. Lip-lip became a nightmare to him. Whenever he ventured
away from his mother, the bully was sure to appear, trailing at his
heels, snarling at him, picking upon him, and watchful of an
opportunity, when no man-animal was near, to spring upon him and force
a fight. As Lip-lip invariably won, he enjoyed it hugely. It became his
chief 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 of the damage and was always defeated, his spirit remained
unsubdued. Yet a bad effect was produced. He became malignant and
morose. His temper had been savage by birth, but it became more savage
under this unending persecution. The genial, playful, puppyish side of
him found little expression. He never played and gambolled about with
the other puppies of the camp. Lip-lip would not permit 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 to make him in his comportment older than his age. Denied the
outlet, through play, of his energies, he recoiled upon himself and
developed his mental processes. He became cunning; he had idle time in
which to devote himself to thoughts of trickery. Prevented from
obtaining his share of meat and fish when a general feed was given to
the camp-dogs, he became a clever thief. He had to forage for himself,
and he foraged well, though he was oft-times a plague to the squaws in
consequence. He learned to sneak about camp, to be crafty, to know what
was going on everywhere, to see and to hear everything and to reason
accordingly, and successfully to devise ways and means of avoiding his
implacable persecutor.
It was early in the days of his persecution that he played his first
really big crafty game and got therefrom his first taste of revenge.
As Kiche, when with the wolves, had lured out to destruction dogs from
the camps of men, so White Fang, in manner somewhat similar, lured
Lip-lip into Kiche’s avenging jaws. Retreating before Lip-lip, White
Fang made an indirect flight that led in and 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 not run his best in this
chase. He barely held his own, one leap ahead of his pursuer.
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 the end of her stick. He gave one yelp of
consternation, and then her punishing jaws 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 repeatedly ripped 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 out all 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 even this he was not allowed to complete.
In the middle of it, White Fang, rushing in, sank his teeth into
Lip-lip’s hind leg. There was no fight left in Lip-lip, and he ran away
shamelessly, his victim hot on his heels and worrying him all the way
back to his own tepee. Here the squaws came to his aid, and White Fang,
transformed into a raging demon, was finally driven off only by a
fusillade of stones.
Came the day when Grey Beaver, deciding that the liability of her
running away was past, released Kiche. White Fang was delighted with
his mother’s freedom. He accompanied her joyfully about the camp; and,
so long as he remained close by her side, Lip-lip kept a respectful
distance. White-Fang even bristled 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 could wait until he caught White Fang
alone.
Later on that day, Kiche and White Fang strayed into the edge of the
woods next to the camp. He had led his mother there, step by step, and
now when she stopped, he tried to inveigle her farther. The stream, the
lair, and the quiet woods 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 scurried playfully 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, all of an
intentness and eagerness, physically expressed, that slowly faded out
of him 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 it too. But she heard also that other and louder call, the call
of the fire and of man—the call which has been given alone of all
animals to the wolf to answer, to the wolf and the wild-dog, who are
brothers.
Kiche turned and slowly trotted back toward camp. Stronger than the
physical restraint of the stick was the clutch of the camp upon her.
Unseen and occultly, 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 a strong smell of pine, and subtle wood
fragrances filled the air, reminding him of his old life of freedom
before the days of his bondage. But he was still only a part-grown
puppy, and stronger than the call either of man or of the Wild was the
call of his mother. All the hours of his short life he had depended
upon her. The time was yet to come for independence. So he arose and
trotted forlornly back to camp, pausing once, and twice, to sit down
and whimper and to listen to the call that still sounded in the depths
of the forest.
In the Wild the time of a mother with her young is short; but under the
dominion of man it is sometimes even shorter. Thus it was with White
Fang. Grey Beaver was in the debt of Three Eagles. Three Eagles was