White Fang
“How’d it happen?” he asked apathetically.
Henry shrugged his shoulders. “Don’t know. Unless One Ear gnawed ’m
loose. He couldn’t a-done it himself, that’s sure.”
“The darned cuss.” Bill spoke gravely and slowly, with no hint of the
anger that was raging within. “Jes’ because he couldn’t chew himself
loose, he chews Spanker loose.”
“Well, Spanker’s troubles is over anyway; I guess he’s digested by this
time an’ cavortin’ over the landscape in the bellies of twenty
different wolves,” was Henry’s epitaph on this, the latest lost dog.
“Have some coffee, Bill.”
But Bill shook his head.
“Go on,” Henry pleaded, elevating the pot.
Bill shoved his cup aside. “I’ll be ding-dong-danged if I do. I said I
wouldn’t if ary dog turned up missin’, an’ I won’t.”
“It’s darn good coffee,” Henry said enticingly.
But Bill was stubborn, and he ate a dry breakfast washed down with
mumbled curses at One Ear for the trick he had played.
“I’ll tie ’em up out of reach of each other to-night,” Bill said, as
they took the trail.
They had travelled little more than a hundred yards, when Henry, who
was in front, bent down and picked up something with which his snowshoe
had collided. It was dark, and he could not see it, but he recognised
it by the touch. He flung it back, so that it struck the sled and
bounced along until it fetched up on Bill’s snowshoes.
“Mebbe you’ll need that in your business,” Henry said.
Bill uttered an exclamation. It was all that was left of Spanker—the
stick with which he had been tied.
“They ate ’m hide an’ all,” Bill announced. “The stick’s as clean as a
whistle. They’ve ate the leather offen both ends. They’re damn hungry,
Henry, an’ they’ll have you an’ me guessin’ before this trip’s over.”
Henry laughed defiantly. “I ain’t been trailed this way by wolves
before, but I’ve gone through a whole lot worse an’ kept my health.
Takes more’n a handful of them pesky critters to do for yours truly,
Bill, my son.”
“I don’t know, I don’t know,” Bill muttered ominously.
“Well, you’ll know all right when we pull into McGurry.”
“I ain’t feelin’ special enthusiastic,” Bill persisted.
“You’re off colour, that’s what’s the matter with you,” Henry
dogmatised. “What you need is quinine, an’ I’m goin’ to dose you up
stiff as soon as we make McGurry.”
Bill grunted his disagreement with the diagnosis, and lapsed into
silence. The day was like all the days. Light came at nine o’clock. At
twelve o’clock the southern horizon was warmed by the unseen sun; and
then began the cold grey of afternoon that would merge, three hours
later, into night.
It was just after the sun’s futile effort to appear, that Bill slipped
the rifle from under the sled-lashings and said:
“You keep right on, Henry, I’m goin’ to see what I can see.”
“You’d better stick by the sled,” his partner protested. “You’ve only
got three cartridges, an’ there’s no tellin’ what might happen.”
“Who’s croaking now?” Bill demanded triumphantly.
Henry made no reply, and plodded on alone, though often he cast anxious
glances back into the grey solitude where his partner had disappeared.
An hour later, taking advantage of the cut-offs around which the sled
had to go, Bill arrived.
“They’re scattered an’ rangin’ along wide,” he said: “keeping up with
us an’ lookin’ for game at the same time. You see, they’re sure of us,
only they know they’ve got to wait to get us. In the meantime they’re
willin’ to pick up anything eatable that comes handy.”
“You mean they _think_ they’re sure of us,” Henry objected pointedly.
But Bill ignored him. “I seen some of them. They’re pretty thin. They
ain’t had a bite in weeks I reckon, outside of Fatty an’ Frog an’
Spanker; an’ there’s so many of ’em that that didn’t go far. They’re
remarkable thin. Their ribs is like wash-boards, an’ their stomachs is
right up against their backbones. They’re pretty desperate, I can tell
you. They’ll be goin’ mad, yet, an’ then watch out.”
A few minutes later, Henry, who was now travelling behind the sled,
emitted a low, warning whistle. Bill turned and looked, then quietly
stopped the dogs. To the rear, from around the last bend and plainly
into view, on the very trail they had just covered, trotted a furry,
slinking form. Its nose was to the trail, and it trotted with a
peculiar, sliding, effortless gait. When they halted, it halted,
throwing up its head and regarding them steadily with nostrils that
twitched as it caught and studied the scent of them.
“It’s the she-wolf,” Bill answered.
The dogs had lain down in the snow, and he walked past them to join his
partner in the sled. Together they watched the strange animal that had
pursued them for days and that had already accomplished the destruction
of half their dog-team.
After a searching scrutiny, the animal trotted forward a few steps.
This it repeated several times, till it was a short hundred yards away.
It paused, head up, close by a clump of spruce trees, and with sight
and scent studied the outfit of the watching men. It looked at them in
a strangely wistful way, after the manner of a dog; but in its
wistfulness there was none of the dog affection. It was a wistfulness
bred of hunger, as cruel as its own fangs, as merciless as the frost
itself.
It was large for a wolf, its gaunt frame advertising the lines of an
animal that was among the largest of its kind.
“Stands pretty close to two feet an’ a half at the shoulders,” Henry
commented. “An’ I’ll bet it ain’t far from five feet long.”
“Kind of strange colour for a wolf,” was Bill’s criticism. “I never
seen a red wolf before. Looks almost cinnamon to me.”
The animal was certainly not cinnamon-coloured. Its coat was the true
wolf-coat. The dominant colour was grey, and yet there was to it a
faint reddish hue—a hue that was baffling, that appeared and
disappeared, that was more like an illusion of the vision, now grey,
distinctly grey, and again giving hints and glints of a vague redness
of colour not classifiable in terms of ordinary experience.
“Looks for all the world like a big husky sled-dog,” Bill said. “I
wouldn’t be s’prised to see it wag its tail.”
“Hello, you husky!” he called. “Come here, you whatever-your-name-is.”
“Ain’t a bit scairt of you,” Henry laughed.
Bill waved his hand at it threateningly and shouted loudly; but the
animal betrayed no fear. The only change in it that they could notice
was an accession of alertness. It still regarded them with the
merciless wistfulness of hunger. They were meat, and it was hungry; and
it would like to go in and eat them if it dared.
“Look here, Henry,” Bill said, unconsciously lowering his voice to a
whisper because of what he imitated. “We’ve got three cartridges. But
it’s a dead shot. Couldn’t miss it. It’s got away with three of our
dogs, an’ we oughter put a stop to it. What d’ye say?”
Henry nodded his consent. Bill cautiously slipped the gun from under
the sled-lashing. The gun was on the way to his shoulder, but it never
got there. For in that instant the she-wolf leaped sidewise from the
trail into the clump of spruce trees and disappeared.
The two men looked at each other. Henry whistled long and
comprehendingly.
“I might have knowed it,” Bill chided himself aloud as he replaced the
gun. “Of course a wolf that knows enough to come in with the dogs at
feedin’ time, ’d know all about shooting-irons. I tell you right now,
Henry, that critter’s the cause of all our trouble. We’d have six dogs
at the present time, ’stead of three, if it wasn’t for her. An’ I tell
you right now, Henry, I’m goin’ to get her. She’s too smart to be shot
in the open. But I’m goin’ to lay for her. I’ll bushwhack her as sure
as my name is Bill.”
“You needn’t stray off too far in doin’ it,” his partner admonished.
“If that pack ever starts to jump you, them three cartridges’d be wuth
no more’n three whoops in hell. Them animals is damn hungry, an’ once
they start in, they’ll sure get you, Bill.”
They camped early that night. Three dogs could not drag the sled so
fast nor for so long hours as could six, and they were showing
unmistakable signs of playing out. And the men went early to bed, Bill
first seeing to it that the dogs were tied out of gnawing-reach of one
another.
But the wolves were growing bolder, and the men were aroused more than
once from their sleep. So near did the wolves approach, that the dogs
became frantic with terror, and it was necessary to replenish the fire
from time to time in order to keep the adventurous marauders at safer
distance.
“I’ve hearn sailors talk of sharks followin’ a ship,” Bill remarked, as
he crawled back into the blankets after one such replenishing of the
fire. “Well, them wolves is land sharks. They know their business
better’n we do, an’ they ain’t a-holdin’ our trail this way for their
health. They’re goin’ to get us. They’re sure goin’ to get us, Henry.”
“They’ve half got you a’ready, a-talkin’ like that,” Henry retorted
sharply. “A man’s half licked when he says he is. An’ you’re half eaten
from the way you’re goin’ on about it.”
“They’ve got away with better men than you an’ me,” Bill answered.
“Oh, shet up your croakin’. You make me all-fired tired.”
Henry rolled over angrily on his side, but was surprised that Bill made
no similar display of temper. This was not Bill’s way, for he was
easily angered by sharp words. Henry thought long over it before he
went to sleep, and as his eyelids fluttered down and he dozed off, the
thought in his mind was: “There’s no mistakin’ it, Bill’s almighty
blue. I’ll have to cheer him up to-morrow.”
CHAPTER III
THE HUNGER CRY
The day began auspiciously. They had lost no dogs during the night, and
they swung out upon the trail and into the silence, the darkness, and
the cold with spirits that were fairly light. Bill seemed to have
forgotten his forebodings of the previous night, and even waxed
facetious with the dogs when, at midday, they overturned the sled on a
bad piece of trail.
It was an awkward mix-up. The sled was upside down and jammed between a
tree-trunk and a huge rock, and they were forced to unharness the dogs
in order to straighten out the tangle. The two men were bent over the
sled and trying to right it, when Henry observed One Ear sidling away.
“Here, you, One Ear!” he cried, straightening up and turning around on
the dog.
But One Ear broke into a run across the snow, his traces trailing
behind him. And there, out in the snow of their back track, was the
she-wolf waiting for him. As he neared her, he became suddenly
cautious. He slowed down to an alert and mincing walk and then stopped.
He regarded her carefully and dubiously, yet desirefully. She seemed to
smile at him, showing her teeth in an ingratiating rather than a
menacing way. She moved toward him a few steps, playfully, and then
halted. One Ear drew near to her, still alert and cautious, his tail
and ears in the air, his head held high.
He tried to sniff noses with her, but she retreated playfully and
coyly. Every advance on his part was accompanied by a corresponding
retreat on her part. Step by step she was luring him away from the
security of his human companionship. Once, as though a warning had in
vague ways flitted through his intelligence, he turned his head and
looked back at the overturned sled, at his team-mates, and at the two
men who were calling to him.
But whatever idea was forming in his mind, was dissipated by the
she-wolf, who advanced upon him, sniffed noses with him for a fleeting
instant, and then resumed her coy retreat before his renewed advances.
In the meantime, Bill had bethought himself of the rifle. But it was
jammed beneath the overturned sled, and by the time Henry had helped