White Fang
Night had fallen. The snow was flying more thickly, and White Fang,
whimpering softly to himself as he stumbled and limped along, came upon
a fresh trail in the snow. So fresh was it that he knew it immediately
for what it was. Whining with 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-kooch cooking, and Grey Beaver
squatting on his hams and mumbling a chunk of raw tallow. There was
fresh meat in camp!
White Fang expected a beating. He crouched and bristled a little at the
thought of it. Then he went forward again. He feared and disliked the
beating he knew to be waiting for him. But he knew, further, that the
comfort of the fire would be his, the protection of the gods, the
companionship of the dogs—the last, a companionship of enmity, but none
the less a companionship and satisfying to his gregarious needs.
He came cringing and crawling into the firelight. Grey Beaver saw him,
and stopped munching the tallow. White Fang crawled slowly, cringing
and grovelling in the abjectness of his abasement and submission. He
crawled straight toward Grey Beaver, every inch of his progress
becoming slower and more painful. At last he lay at the master’s feet,
into whose possession he now surrendered himself, voluntarily, body and
soul. Of his own choice, he came in to sit by man’s fire and to be
ruled by him. White Fang trembled, waiting for the punishment to fall
upon him. There was a movement of the hand above him. He cringed
involuntarily under the expected blow. It did not fall. He stole 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
somewhat suspiciously, he first smelled the tallow and then proceeded
to eat it. Grey Beaver ordered meat to be brought to him, and guarded
him from the other dogs while he ate. After that, grateful and content,
White Fang lay at Grey Beaver’s feet, gazing at the fire that warmed
him, blinking and dozing, secure in the knowledge that the morrow would
find him, not wandering forlorn through bleak forest-stretches, but in
the camp of the man-animals, with the gods 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 dogs he 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 than anything else, yet it was the
delight of Mit-sah, who felt that he was beginning to do a man’s work
in the world. Also, he was learning to drive dogs and to train dogs;
while the puppies themselves were being broken in to the harness.
Furthermore, the sled was of some service, for it carried nearly two
hundred pounds of outfit and food.
White Fang had seen the camp-dogs toiling in the harness, so that he
did not resent overmuch the first placing of the harness upon himself.
About his neck was put a moss-stuffed collar, which was connected by
two pulling-traces to a strap that passed around his chest and over his
back. It was to this that was fastened the long rope by which he pulled
at the sled.
There were seven puppies in the team. The others had been born earlier
in the year and were nine and ten months old, while White Fang was only
eight months old. Each dog was fastened to the sled by a single rope.
No two ropes were of the same length, while the difference in length
between any two ropes was at least that of a dog’s body. Every rope was
brought to a ring at the front end of the sled. The sled itself was
without runners, being a birch-bark toboggan, with upturned forward end
to keep it from ploughing under the snow. This construction enabled the
weight of the sled and load to be distributed over 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 the
ends of their ropes radiated fan-fashion from the nose of the sled, so
that no dog trod in another’s footsteps.
There was, furthermore, another virtue in the fan-formation. The ropes
of varying length prevented the dogs attacking from the rear those that
ran in front of them. For a dog to attack another, it would have to
turn upon one at a shorter rope. In which case it would find itself
face to face with the dog attacked, and also it would find itself
facing the whip of the driver. But the most peculiar virtue of all lay
in the fact that the dog that strove to attack one in front of him must
pull the sled faster, and that the faster the sled travelled, the
faster could the dog attacked run away. Thus, the dog behind could
never catch up with the one in front. The faster he ran, the faster ran
the one he was after, and the faster ran all the dogs. Incidentally,
the sled went faster, and thus, by cunning indirection, did man
increase his mastery over the beasts.
Mit-sah resembled his father, much of whose grey wisdom he possessed.
In the past he had observed Lip-lip’s persecution of White Fang; but at
that time Lip-lip was another man’s dog, and Mit-sah had never dared
more than to shy an occasional stone at him. But now Lip-lip was his
dog, and he proceeded to wreak his vengeance on him by putting him at
the end of the longest rope. This made Lip-lip the leader, and was
apparently an honour! but in reality it took away from him all honour,
and instead of being bully and master 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 of him running away before them. All that they saw of him was his
bushy tail and fleeing hind legs—a view far less ferocious and
intimidating than his bristling mane and gleaming fangs. Also, dogs
being so constituted in their mental ways, the sight of him running
away gave desire to run after him and a feeling that he ran away from
them.
The moment the sled started, the team took after Lip-lip in a chase
that extended throughout the day. At first he had been prone to turn
upon his pursuers, jealous of his dignity and wrathful; but at such
times Mit-sah would throw the stinging lash of the thirty-foot
cariboo-gut whip into his face and compel him to turn tail and run on.
Lip-lip might face the pack, but he could not face that whip, and all
that was left him to do was to keep his long rope taut and his flanks
ahead of the teeth of his mates.
But a still greater cunning lurked in the recesses of the Indian mind.
To give point to unending pursuit of the leader, Mit-sah favoured him
over the other dogs. These favours aroused in them jealousy and hatred.
In their presence Mit-sah would give him meat and would give it to him
only. This was maddening to 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 was no meat to give, Mit-sah
would keep the team at a distance and make believe to give meat to
Lip-lip.
White Fang took kindly to the work. He had travelled a greater distance
than the other dogs in the yielding of himself to the rule of the gods,
and he had learned more thoroughly the futility of opposing their will.
In addition, the persecution he had suffered from the pack had made the
pack less to him in the scheme of things, and man more. He had not
learned to be dependent on his kind for companionship. Besides, Kiche
was well-nigh forgotten; and the chief outlet of expression that
remained to him was in the allegiance he tendered the gods he had
accepted as masters. So he worked hard, learned discipline, and was
obedient. Faithfulness and willingness characterised his toil. These
are essential traits of the wolf and the wild-dog when they have become
domesticated, and these traits White Fang possessed in unusual measure.
A companionship did exist between White Fang and the other dogs, but it
was one of warfare and enmity. He had never learned to play with them.
He knew only how to fight, and fight with them he did, returning to
them a hundred-fold the snaps and slashes they had given him in the
days when Lip-lip was leader of the pack. But Lip-lip was no longer
leader—except when he fled away before his mates at the end of his
rope, the sled bounding along behind. In camp he kept close to Mit-sah
or Grey Beaver or Kloo-kooch. He did not dare venture away from the
gods, for now the fangs of all dogs were against him, and he tasted 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 did the boldest of them ever dare to rob
him of his meat. On the contrary, they devoured their own meat
hurriedly, for fear that he would take it away from them. White Fang
knew the law well: _to oppress the weak and obey the strong_. He ate
his share of meat as rapidly as he could. And then woe the dog that had
not yet finished! A snarl and a flash of fangs, and that dog would wail
his indignation to the uncomforting stars while White Fang finished his
portion for him.
Every little while, however, one dog or another would flame up in
revolt and be promptly subdued. Thus White Fang was kept in training.
He was jealous of the isolation in which he kept himself in the midst
of the pack, and he fought often to maintain it. But such fights were
of brief duration. He was too quick for the others. They were slashed
open and bleeding before they knew what had happened, were whipped
almost before they had begun to fight.
As rigid as the sled-discipline of the gods, was the discipline
maintained by White Fang amongst his fellows. He never allowed them any
latitude. He compelled them to an unremitting respect for him. They
might do as they pleased amongst themselves. That was no concern of
his. But it _was_ his concern that they leave him alone in his
isolation, get out of his way when he elected to walk among them, and
at all times acknowledge his mastery over them. A hint of
stiff-leggedness on their part, a lifted lip or a bristle of hair, and
he would be upon them, merciless and cruel, swiftly convincing them of
the error of their way.
He was a monstrous tyrant. His mastery was rigid as steel. He oppressed
the weak with a vengeance. Not for nothing had he been exposed to the
pitiless struggles for life in the day of his cubhood, when his mother
and he, alone and unaided, 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 went by. He oppressed the weak, but he
respected the strong. And in the course of the long journey with Grey
Beaver he walked softly indeed amongst the full-grown dogs in the camps
of the strange man-animals they encountered.
The months passed by. Still continued the journey of Grey Beaver. White
Fang’s strength was developed by the long hours on trail and the steady
toil at the sled; and it would have seemed that his mental development
was well-nigh complete. He had come to know quite thoroughly the world
in which he lived. His outlook was bleak and materialistic. The world
as he saw it was a fierce and brutal world, a world without warmth, a
world in which caresses and affection 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