White Fang
nothing to what he realised. His wildest dreams had not exceeded a
hundred per cent. profit; he made a thousand per cent. And like a true
Indian, he settled down to trade carefully and slowly, even if it took
all summer and the rest of the winter to dispose of his goods.
It was at Fort Yukon that White Fang saw his first white men. As
compared with the Indians he had known, they were to him another race
of beings, a race of superior gods. They impressed him as possessing
superior power, and it is on power that godhead rests. White Fang did
not reason it out, did not in his mind make the sharp generalisation
that the white gods were more powerful. It was a feeling, nothing more,
and yet none the less potent. As, in his puppyhood, the looming bulks
of the tepees, man-reared, had affected him as manifestations of power,
so was he affected now by the houses and the huge fort all of massive
logs. Here was power. Those white gods were strong. They possessed
greater mastery over matter than the gods he had known, most powerful
among which was Grey Beaver. And yet Grey Beaver was as a child-god
among these white-skinned ones.
To be sure, White Fang only felt these things. He was not conscious of
them. Yet it is upon feeling, more often than thinking, that animals
act; and every act White Fang now performed was based upon the feeling
that the white men were the superior gods. In the first place he was
very suspicious of them. There was no telling what unknown terrors were
theirs, what unknown hurts they could administer. He was curious to
observe them, fearful of being noticed by them. For the first few hours
he was content with slinking around and watching them from a safe
distance. Then he saw that no harm befell the dogs that were near to
them, and he came in closer.
In turn he was an object of great curiosity to them. His wolfish
appearance caught their eyes at once, and they pointed him out to one
another. This act of pointing put White Fang on his guard, and when
they tried to approach him he showed his teeth and backed away. Not one
succeeded in laying a hand on him, and it was well that they did not.
White Fang soon learned that very few of these gods—not more than a
dozen—lived at this place. Every two or three days a steamer (another
and colossal manifestation of power) came into the bank and stopped for
several hours. The white men came from off these steamers and went away
on them again. There seemed untold numbers of these white men. In the
first day or so, he saw more of them than he had seen Indians in all
his life; and as the days went by they continued to come up the river,
stop, and then go on up the river out of sight.
But if the white gods were all-powerful, their dogs did not amount to
much. This White Fang quickly discovered by mixing with those that came
ashore with their masters. They were irregular shapes and sizes. Some
were short-legged—too short; others were long-legged—too long. They had
hair instead of fur, and a few had very little hair at that. And none
of them knew how to fight.
As an enemy of his kind, it was in White Fang’s province to fight with
them. This he did, and he quickly achieved for them a mighty contempt.
They were soft and helpless, made much noise, and floundered around
clumsily trying to accomplish by main strength what he accomplished by
dexterity and cunning. They rushed bellowing at him. He sprang to the
side. They did not know what had become of him; and in that moment he
struck them on the shoulder, rolling them off their feet and delivering
his stroke at the throat.
Sometimes this stroke was successful, and a stricken dog rolled in the
dirt, to be pounced upon and torn to pieces by the pack of Indian dogs
that waited. White Fang was wise. He had long since learned that the
gods were made angry when their dogs were killed. The white men were no
exception to this. So he was content, when he had overthrown and
slashed wide the throat of one of their dogs, to drop back and let the
pack go in and do the cruel finishing work. It was then that the white
men rushed in, visiting their wrath heavily on the pack, while White
Fang went free. He would stand off at a little distance and look on,
while stones, clubs, axes, and all sorts of weapons fell upon his
fellows. White Fang was very wise.
But his fellows grew wise in their own way; and in this White Fang grew
wise with them. They learned that it was when a steamer first tied to
the bank that they had their fun. After the first two or three strange
dogs had been downed and destroyed, the white men hustled their own
animals back on board and wrecked savage vengeance on the offenders.
One white man, having seen his dog, a setter, torn to pieces before his
eyes, drew a revolver. He fired rapidly, six times, and six of the pack
lay dead or dying—another manifestation of power that sank deep into
White Fang’s consciousness.
White Fang enjoyed it all. He did not love his kind, and he was shrewd
enough to escape hurt himself. At first, the killing of the white men’s
dogs had been a diversion. After a time it became his occupation. There
was no work for him to do. Grey Beaver was busy trading and getting
wealthy. So White Fang hung around the landing with the disreputable
gang of Indian dogs, waiting for steamers. With the arrival of a
steamer the fun began. After a few minutes, by the time the white men
had got over their surprise, the gang scattered. The fun was over until
the next steamer should arrive.
But it can scarcely be said that White Fang was a member of the gang.
He did not mingle with it, but remained aloof, always himself, and was
even feared by it. It is true, he worked with it. He picked the quarrel
with the strange dog while the gang waited. And when he had overthrown
the strange dog the gang went in to finish it. But it is equally true
that he then withdrew, leaving the gang to receive the punishment of
the outraged gods.
It did not require much exertion to pick these quarrels. All he had to
do, when the strange dogs came ashore, was to show himself. When they
saw him they rushed for him. It was their instinct. He was the Wild—the
unknown, the terrible, the ever-menacing, the thing that prowled in the
darkness around the fires of the primeval world when they, cowering
close to the fires, were reshaping their instincts, learning to fear
the Wild out of which they had come, and which they had deserted and
betrayed. Generation by generation, down all the generations, had this
fear of the Wild been stamped into their natures. For centuries the
Wild had stood for terror and destruction. And during all this time
free licence had been theirs, from their masters, to kill the things of
the Wild. In doing this they had protected both themselves and the gods
whose companionship they shared.
And so, fresh from the soft southern world, these dogs, trotting down
the gang-plank and out upon the Yukon shore had but to see White Fang
to experience the irresistible impulse to rush upon him and destroy
him. They might be town-reared dogs, but the instinctive fear of the
Wild was theirs just the same. Not alone with their own eyes did they
see the wolfish creature in the clear light of day, standing before
them. They saw him with the eyes of their ancestors, and by their
inherited memory they knew White Fang for the wolf, and they remembered
the ancient feud.
All of which served to make White Fang’s days enjoyable. If the sight
of him drove these strange dogs upon him, so much the better for him,
so much the worse for them. They looked upon him as legitimate prey,
and as legitimate prey he looked upon them.
Not for nothing had he first seen the light of day in a lonely lair and
fought his first fights with the ptarmigan, the weasel, and the lynx.
And not for nothing had his puppyhood been made bitter by the
persecution of Lip-lip and the whole puppy pack. It might have been
otherwise, and he would then have been otherwise. Had Lip-lip not
existed, he would have passed his puppyhood with the other puppies and
grown up more doglike and with more liking for dogs. Had Grey Beaver
possessed the plummet of affection and love, he might have sounded the
deeps of White Fang’s nature and brought up to the surface all manner
of kindly qualities. But these things had not been so. The clay of
White Fang had been moulded until he became what he was, morose and
lonely, unloving and ferocious, the enemy of all his kind.
CHAPTER II
THE MAD GOD
A small number of white men lived in Fort Yukon. These men had been
long in the country. They called themselves Sour-doughs, and took great
pride in so classifying themselves. For other men, new in the land,
they felt nothing but disdain. The men who came ashore from the
steamers were newcomers. They were known as _chechaquos_, and they
always wilted 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 they had no baking-powder.
All of which is neither here nor there. The men in the fort disdained
the newcomers and enjoyed seeing them come to grief. Especially did
they enjoy the havoc worked amongst the newcomers’ dogs by White Fang
and his disreputable gang. When a steamer arrived, the men of the fort
made it a point always to come down to the bank and see the fun. They
looked forward to it with as much anticipation as did the Indian dogs,
while they were not slow to appreciate the savage and crafty part
played by White Fang.
But there was one man amongst them who particularly enjoyed the sport.
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 had scattered,
he would return slowly to the fort, his face heavy with regret.
Sometimes, when a soft southland dog went down, shrieking its death-cry
under 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 a sharp and covetous eye for White Fang.
This man was called “Beauty” by the other men of the fort. No one knew
his first name, and in general he was known in the country as Beauty
Smith. But he was anything save a beauty. To antithesis was due his
naming. He was pre-eminently unbeautiful. Nature had been niggardly
with him. He was a small man to begin with; and upon his meagre frame
was deposited an even more strikingly meagre head. Its apex might be
likened to a point. In fact, in his boyhood, before he had been named
Beauty by his fellows, he had been called “Pinhead.”
Backward, from the apex, his head slanted down to his neck and forward
it slanted uncompromisingly to meet a low and remarkably wide forehead.
Beginning here, as though regretting her parsimony, Nature had spread
his features with a lavish hand. His eyes were large, and between them
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
given him an enormous prognathous jaw. It was wide and heavy, and
protruded outward and down until it seemed to rest on his chest.
Possibly this appearance was due to the weariness of the slender neck,
unable properly to support so great a burden.
This jaw gave the impression of ferocious determination. But something
lacked. Perhaps it was from excess. Perhaps the jaw was too large. At
any rate, it was a lie. Beauty Smith was known far and wide as the
weakest of weak-kneed and snivelling cowards. To complete his
description, his teeth were large and yellow, while the two eye-teeth,
larger than their fellows, showed under his lean lips like fangs. His