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, lying 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 this 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
submission made him master his fear, and he only growled softly.
This growl he could not suppress; nor did the man-animal resent it
by giving him a blow on the head.  And furthermore, such was the
strangeness of it, White Fang experienced an unaccountable
sensation of pleasure as the hand rubbed back and forth.  When he
was rolled on his side he ceased to growl, when the fingers pressed
and prodded at the base of his ears the pleasurable sensation
increased; and when, with a final rub and scratch, the man left him
alone and went away, all fear had died out of White Fang.  He was
to know fear many times in his dealing with man; yet it was a token
of the fearless companionship with man that was ultimately to be
his.

After a time, White Fang heard strange noises approaching.  He was
quick in his classification, for he knew them at once for man-
animal noises.  A few minutes later the remainder of the tribe,
strung out as it was on the march, trailed in.  There were more men
and many women and children, forty souls of them, and all heavily
burdened with camp equipage and outfit.  Also there were many dogs;
and these, with the exception of the part-grown puppies, were
likewise burdened with camp outfit.  On their backs, in bags that
fastened tightly around underneath, the dogs carried from twenty to
thirty pounds of weight.

White Fang had never seen dogs before, but at sight of them he felt
that they were his own kind, only somehow different.  But they
displayed little difference from the wolf when they discovered the
cub and his mother.  There was a rush.  White Fang bristled and
snarled and snapped in the face of the open-mouthed oncoming wave
of dogs, and went down and under them, feeling the sharp slash of
teeth in his body, himself biting and tearing at the legs and
bellies above him.  There was a great uproar.  He could hear the
snarl of Kiche as she fought for him; and he could hear the cries
of the man-animals, the sound of clubs striking upon bodies, and
the yelps of pain from the dogs so struck.

Only a few seconds elapsed before he was on his feet again.  He
could now see the man-animals driving back the dogs with clubs and
stones, defending him, saving him from the savage teeth of his kind
that somehow was not his kind.  And though there was no reason in
his brain for a clear conception of so abstract a thing as justice,
nevertheless, in his own way, he felt the justice of the man-
animals, and he knew them for what they were - makers of law and
executors of law.  Also, he appreciated the power with which they
administered the law.  Unlike any animals he had ever encountered,
they did not bite nor claw.  They enforced their live strength with
the power of dead things.  Dead things did their bidding.  Thus,
sticks and stones, directed by these strange creatures, leaped
through the air like living things, inflicting grievous hurts upon
the dogs.

To his mind this was power unusual, power inconceivable and beyond
the natural, power that was godlike.  White Fang, in the very
nature of him, could never know anything about gods; at the best he
could know only things that were beyond knowing - but the wonder
and awe that he had of these man-animals in ways resembled what
would be the wonder and awe of man at sight of some celestial
creature, on a mountain top, hurling thunderbolts from either hand
at an astonished world.

The last dog had been driven back.  The hubbub died down.  And
White Fang licked his hurts and meditated upon this, his first
taste of pack-cruelty and his introduction to the pack.  He had
never dreamed that his own kind consisted of more than One Eye, his
mother, and himself.  They had constituted a kind apart, and here,
abruptly, he had discovered many more creatures apparently of his
own kind.  And there was a subconscious resentment that these, his
kind, at first sight had pitched upon him and tried to destroy him.
In the same way he resented his mother being tied with a stick,
even though it was done by the superior man-animals.  It savoured
of the trap, of bondage.  Yet of the trap and of bondage he knew
nothing.  Freedom to roam and run and lie down at will, had been
his heritage; and here it was being infringed upon.  His mother's
movements were restricted to the length of a stick, and by the
length of that same stick was he restricted, for he had not yet got
beyond the need of his mother's side.

He did not like it.  Nor did he like it when the man-animals arose
and went on with their march; for a tiny man-animal took the other
end of the stick and led Kiche captive behind him, and behind Kiche
followed White Fang, greatly perturbed and worried by this new
adventure he had entered upon.

They went down the valley of the stream, far beyond White Fang's
widest ranging, until they came to the end of the valley, where the
stream ran into the Mackenzie River.  Here, where canoes were
cached on poles high in the air and where stood fish-racks for the
drying of fish, camp was made; and White Fang looked on with
wondering eyes.  The superiority of these man-animals increased
with every moment.  There was their mastery over all these sharp-
fanged dogs.  It breathed of power.  But greater than that, to the
wolf-cub, was their mastery over things not alive; their capacity
to communicate motion to unmoving things; their capacity to change
the very face of the world.

It was this last that especially affected him.  The elevation of
frames of poles caught his eye; yet this in itself was not so
remarkable, being done by the same creatures that flung sticks and
stones to great distances.  But when the frames of poles were made
into tepees by being covered with cloth and skins, White Fang was
astounded.  It was the colossal bulk of them that impressed him.
They arose around him, on every side, like some monstrous quick-
growing form of life.  They occupied nearly the whole circumference
of his field of vision.  He was afraid of them.  They loomed
ominously above him; and when the breeze stirred them into huge
movements, he cowered down in fear, keeping his eyes warily upon
them, and prepared to spring away if they attempted to precipitate
themselves upon him.

But in a short while his fear of the tepees passed away.  He saw
the women and children passing in and out of them without harm, and
he saw the dogs trying often to get into them, and being driven
away with sharp words and flying stones.  After a time, he left
Kiche's side and crawled cautiously toward the wall of the nearest
tepee.  It was the curiosity of growth that urged him on - the
necessity of learning and living and doing that brings experience.
The last few inches to the wall of the tepee were crawled with
painful slowness and precaution.  The day's events had prepared him
for the unknown to manifest itself in most stupendous and
unthinkable ways.  At last his nose touched the canvas.  He waited.
Nothing happened.  Then he smelled the strange fabric, saturated
with the man-smell.  He closed on the canvas with his teeth and
gave a gentle tug.  Nothing happened, though the adjacent portions
of the tepee moved.  He tugged harder.  There was a greater
movement.  It was delightful.  He tugged still harder, and
repeatedly, until the whole tepee was in motion.  Then the sharp
cry of a squaw inside sent him scampering back to Kiche.  But after
that he was afraid no more of the looming bulks of the tepees.

A moment later he was straying away again from his mother.  Her
stick was tied to a peg in the ground and she could not follow him.
A part-grown puppy, somewhat larger and older than he, came toward
him slowly, with ostentatious and belligerent importance.  The
puppy's name, as White Fang was afterward to hear him called, was
Lip-lip.  He had had experience in puppy fights and was already
something of a bully.

Lip-lip was White Fang's own kind, and, being only a puppy, did not
seem dangerous; so White Fang prepared to meet him in a friendly
spirit.  But when the strangers walk became stiff-legged and his
lips lifted clear of his teeth, White Fang stiffened too, and
answered with lifted lips.  They half circled about each other,
tentatively, snarling and bristling.  This lasted several minutes,
and White Fang was beginning to enjoy it, as a sort of game.  But
suddenly, with remarkable swiftness, Lip-lip leaped in, delivering
a slashing snap, and leaped away again.  The snap had taken effect
on the shoulder that had been hurt by the lynx and that was still
sore deep down near the bone.  The surprise and hurt of it brought
a yelp out of White Fang; but the next moment, in a rush of anger,
he was upon Lip-lip and snapping viciously.

But Lip-hp had lived his life in camp and had fought many puppy
fights.  Three times, four times, and half a dozen times, his sharp
little teeth scored on the newcomer, until White Fang, yelping
shamelessly, fled to the protection of his mother.  It was the
first of the many fights he was to have with Lip-lip, for they were
enemies from the start, born so, with natures destined perpetually
to clash.

Kiche licked White Fang soothingly with her tongue, and tried to
prevail upon him to remain with her.  But his curiosity was
rampant, and several minutes later he was venturing forth on a new
quest.  He came upon one of the man-animals, Grey Beaver, who was
squatting on his hams and doing something with sticks and dry moss
spread before him on the ground.  White Fang came near to him and
watched.  Grey Beaver made mouth-noises which White Fang
interpreted as not hostile, so he came still nearer.

Women and children were carrying more sticks and branches to Grey
Beaver.  It was evidently an affair of moment.  White Fang came in
until he touched Grey Beaver's knee, so curious was he, and already
forgetful that this was a terrible man-animal.  Suddenly he saw a
strange thing like mist beginning to arise from the sticks and moss
beneath Grey Beaver's hands.  Then, amongst the sticks themselves,
appeared a live thing, twisting and turning, of a colour like the
colour of the sun in the sky.  White Fang knew nothing about fire.
It drew him as the light, in the mouth of the cave had drawn him in
his early puppyhood.  He crawled the several steps toward the
flame.  He heard Grey Beaver chuckle above him, and he knew the
sound was not hostile.  Then his nose touched the flame, and at the
same instant his little tongue went out to it.

For a moment he was paralysed.  The unknown, lurking in the midst
of the sticks and moss, was savagely clutching him by the nose.  He
scrambled backward, bursting out in an astonished explosion of ki-
yi's.  At the sound, Kiche leaped snarling to the end of her stick,
and there raged terribly because she could not come to his aid.
But Grey Beaver laughed loudly, and slapped his thighs, and told
the happening to all the rest of the camp, till everybody was
laughing uproariously.  But White Fang sat on his haunches and ki-
yi'd and ki-yi'd, a forlorn and pitiable little figure in the midst
of the man-animals.

It was the worst hurt he had ever known.  Both nose and tongue had
been scorched by the live thing, sun-coloured, that had grown up
under Grey Beaver's hands.  He cried and cried interminably, and
every fresh wail was greeted by bursts of laughter on the part of
the man-animals.  He tried to soothe his nose with his tongue, but
the tongue was burnt too, and the two hurts coming together
produced greater hurt; whereupon he cried more hopelessly and
helplessly than ever.

And then shame came to him.  He knew laughter and the meaning of
it.  It is not given us to know how some animals know laughter, and
know when they are being laughed at; but it was this same way that
White Fang knew it.  And he felt shame that the man-animals should
be laughing at him.  He turned and fled away, not from the hurt of
the fire, but from 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.
<--split-->
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.  While 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 there from 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 going away on a trip up the Mackenzie to the Great Slave
Lake.  A strip of scarlet cloth, a bearskin, twenty cartridges, and
Kiche, went to pay the debt.  White Fang saw his mother taken
aboard Three Eagles' canoe, and tried to follow her.  A blow from
Three Eagles knocked him backward to the land.  The canoe shoved
off.  He sprang into the water and swam after it, deaf to the sharp
cries of Grey Beaver to return.  Even a man-animal, a god, White
Fang ignored, such was the terror he was in of losing his mother.

But gods are accustomed to being obeyed, and Grey Beaver wrathfully
launched a canoe in pursuit.  When he overtook White Fang, he
reached down and by the nape of the neck lifted him clear of the
water.  He did not deposit him at once in the bottom of the canoe.
Holding him suspended with one hand, with the other hand he
proceeded to give him a beating.  And it WAS a beating.  His hand
was heavy.  Every blow was shrewd to hurt; and he delivered a
multitude of blows.

Impelled by the blows that rained upon him, now from this side, now
from that, White Fang swung back and forth like an erratic and
jerky pendulum.  Varying were the emotions that surged through him.
At first, he had known surprise.  Then came a momentary fear, when
he yelped several times to the impact of the hand.  But this was
quickly followed by anger.  His free nature asserted itself, and he
showed his teeth and snarled fearlessly in the face of the wrathful
god.  This but served to make the god more wrathful.  The blows
came faster, heavier, more shrewd to hurt.

Grey Beaver continued to beat, White Fang continued to snarl.  But
this could not last for ever.  One or the other must give over, and
that one was White Fang.  Fear surged through him again.  For the
first time he was being really man-handled.  The occasional blows
of sticks and stones he had previously experienced were as caresses
compared with this.  He broke down and began to cry and yelp.  For
a time each blow brought a yelp from him; but fear passed into
terror, until finally his yelps were voiced in unbroken succession,
unconnected with the rhythm of the punishment.

At last Grey Beaver withheld his hand.  White Fang, hanging limply,
continued to cry.  This seemed to satisfy his master, who flung him
down roughly in the bottom of the canoe.  In the meantime the canoe
had drifted down the stream.  Grey Beaver picked up the paddle.
White Fang was in his way.  He spurned him savagely with his foot.
In that moment White Fang's free nature flashed forth again, and he
sank his teeth into the moccasined foot.

The beating that had gone before was as nothing compared with the
beating he now received.  Grey Beaver's wrath was terrible;
likewise was White Fang's fright.  Not only the hand, but the hard
wooden paddle was used upon him; and he was bruised and sore in all
his small body when he was again flung down in the canoe.  Again,
and this time with purpose, did Grey Beaver kick him.  White Fang
did not repeat his attack on the foot.  He had learned another
lesson of his bondage.  Never, no matter what the circumstance,
must he dare to bite the god who was lord and master over him; the
body of the lord and master was sacred, not to be defiled by the
teeth of such as he.  That was evidently the crime of crimes, the
one offence there was no condoning nor overlooking.

When the canoe touched the shore, White Fang lay whimpering and
motionless, waiting the will of Grey Beaver.  It was Grey Beaver's
will that he should go ashore, for ashore he was flung, striking
heavily on his side and hurting his bruises afresh.  He crawled
tremblingly to his feet and stood whimpering.  Lip-lip, who had
watched the whole proceeding from the bank, now rushed upon him,
knocking him over and sinking his teeth into him.  White Fang was
too helpless to defend himself, and it would have gone hard with
him had not Grey Beaver's foot shot out, lifting Lip-lip into the
air with its violence so that he smashed down to earth a dozen feet
away.  This was the man-animal's justice; and even then, in his own
pitiable plight, White Fang experienced a little grateful thrill.
At Grey Beaver's heels he limped obediently through the village to
the tepee.  And so it came that White Fang learned that the right
to punish was something the gods reserved for themselves and denied
to the lesser creatures under them.

That night, when all was still, White Fang remembered his mother
and sorrowed for her.  He sorrowed too loudly and woke up Grey
Beaver, who beat him.  After that he mourned gently when the gods
were around.  But sometimes, straying off to the edge of the woods
by himself, he gave vent to his grief, and cried it out with loud
whimperings and wailings.

It was during this period that he might have harkened to the
memories of the lair and the stream and run back to the Wild.  But
the memory of his mother held him.  As the hunting man-animals went
out and came back, so she would come back to the village some time.
So he remained in his bondage waiting for her.

But it was not altogether an unhappy bondage.  There was much to
interest him.  Something was always happening.  There was no end to
the strange things these gods did, and he was always curious to
see.  Besides, he was learning how to get along with Grey Beaver.
Obedience, rigid, undeviating obedience, was what was exacted of
him; and in return he escaped beatings and his existence was
tolerated.

Nay, Grey Beaver himself sometimes tossed him a piece of meat, and
defended him against the other dogs in the eating of it.  And such
a piece of meat was of value.  It was worth more, in some strange
way, then a dozen pieces of meat from the hand of a squaw.  Grey
Beaver never petted nor caressed.  Perhaps it was the weight of his
hand, perhaps his justice, perhaps the sheer power of him, and
perhaps it was all these things that influenced White Fang; for a
certain tie of attachment was forming between him and his surly
lord.

Insidiously, and by remote ways, as well as by the power of stick
and stone and clout of hand, were the shackles of White Fang's
bondage being riveted upon him.  The qualities in his kind that in
the beginning made it possible for them to come in to the fires of
men, were qualities capable of development.  They were developing
in him, and the camp-life, replete with misery as it was, was
secretly endearing itself to him all the time.  But White Fang was
unaware of it.  He knew only grief for the loss of Kiche, hope for
her return, and a hungry yearning for the free life that had been
his.
<--split-->
CHAPTER III - THE OUTCAST

Lip-lip continued so to darken his days that White Fang became
wickeder and more ferocious than it was his natural right to be.
Savageness was a part of his make-up, but the savageness thus
developed exceeded his make-up.  He acquired a reputation for
wickedness amongst the man-animals themselves.  Wherever there was
trouble and uproar in camp, fighting and squabbling or the outcry
of a squaw over a bit of stolen meat, they were sure to find White
Fang mixed up in it and usually at the bottom of it.  They did not
bother to look after the causes of his conduct.  They saw only the
effects, and the effects were bad.  He was a sneak and a thief, a
mischief-maker, a fomenter of trouble; and irate squaws told him to
his face, the while he eyed them alert and ready to dodge any
quick-flung missile, that he was a wolf and worthless and bound to
come to an evil end.

He found himself an outcast in the midst of the populous camp.  All
the young dogs followed Lip-lip's lead.  There was a difference
between White Fang and them.  Perhaps they sensed his wild-wood
breed, and instinctively felt for him the enmity that the domestic
dog feels for the wolf.  But be that as it may, they joined with
Lip-lip in the persecution.  And, once declared against him, they
found good reason to continue declared against him.  One and all,
from time to time, they felt his teeth; and to his credit, he gave
more than he received.  Many of them he could whip in single fight;
but single fight was denied him.  The beginning of such a fight was
a signal for all the young dogs in camp to come running and pitch
upon him.

Out of this pack-persecution he learned two important things:  how
to take care of himself in a mass-fight against him - and how, on a
single dog, to inflict the greatest amount of damage in the
briefest space of time.  To keep one's feet in the midst of the
hostile mass meant life, and this he learnt well.  He became cat-
like in his ability to stay on his feet.  Even grown dogs might
hurtle him backward or sideways with the impact of their heavy
bodies; and backward or sideways he would go, in the air or sliding
on the ground, but always with his legs under him and his feet
downward to the mother earth.

When dogs fight, there are usually preliminaries to the actual
combat - snarlings and bristlings and stiff-legged struttings.  But
White Fang learned to omit these preliminaries.  Delay meant the
coming against him of all the young dogs.  He must do his work
quickly and get away.  So he learnt to give no warning of his
intention.  He rushed in and snapped and slashed on the instant,
without notice, before his foe could prepare to meet him.  Thus he
learned how to inflict quick and severe damage.  Also he learned
the value of surprise.  A dog, taken off its guard, its shoulder
slashed open or its ear ripped in ribbons before it knew what was
happening, was a dog half whipped.

Furthermore, it was remarkably easy to overthrow a dog taken by
surprise; while a dog, thus overthrown, invariably exposed for a
moment the soft underside of its neck - the vulnerable point at
which to strike for its life.  White Fang knew this point.  It was
a knowledge bequeathed to him directly from the hunting generation
of wolves.  So it was that White Fang's method when he took the
offensive, was:  first to find a young dog alone; second, to
surprise it and knock it off its feet; and third, to drive in with
his teeth at the soft throat.

Being but partly grown his jaws had not yet become large enough nor
strong enough to make his throat-attack deadly; but many a young
dog went around camp with a lacerated throat in token of White
Fang's intention.  And one day, catching one of his enemies alone
on the edge of the woods, he managed, by repeatedly overthrowing
him and attacking the throat, to cut the great vein and let out the
life.  There was a great row that night.  He had been observed, the
news had been carried to the dead dog's master, the squaws
remembered all the instances of stolen meat, and Grey Beaver was
beset by many angry voices.  But he resolutely held the door of his
tepee, inside which he had placed the culprit, and refused to
permit the vengeance for which his tribespeople clamoured.

White Fang became hated by man and dog.  During this period of his
development he never knew a moment's security.  The tooth of every
dog was against him, the hand of every man.  He was greeted with
snarls by his kind, with curses and stones by his gods.  He lived
tensely.  He was always keyed up, alert for attack, wary of being
attacked, with an eye for sudden and unexpected missiles, prepared
to act precipitately and coolly, to leap in with a flash of teeth,
or to leap away with a menacing snarl.

As for snarling he could snarl more terribly than any dog, young or
old, in camp.  The intent of the snarl is to warn or frighten, and
judgment is required to know when it should be used.  White Fang
knew how to make it and when to make it.  Into his snarl he
incorporated all that was vicious, malignant, and horrible.  With
nose serrulated by continuous spasms, hair bristling in recurrent
waves, tongue whipping out like a red snake and whipping back
again, ears flattened down, eyes gleaming hatred, lips wrinkled
back, and fangs exposed and dripping, he could compel a pause on
the part of almost any assailant.  A temporary pause, when taken
off his guard, gave him the vital moment in which to think and
determine his action.  But often a pause so gained lengthened out
until it evolved into a complete cessation from the attack.  And
before more than one of the grown dogs White Fang's snarl enabled
him to beat an honourable retreat.

An outcast himself from the pack of the part-grown dogs, his
sanguinary methods and remarkable efficiency made the pack pay for
its persecution of him.  Not permitted himself to run with the
pack, the curious state of affairs obtained that no member of the
pack could run outside the pack.  White Fang would not permit it.
What of his bushwhacking and waylaying tactics, the young dogs were
afraid to run by themselves.  With the exception of Lip-lip, they
were compelled to hunch together for mutual protection against the
terrible enemy they had made.  A puppy alone by the river bank
meant a puppy dead or a puppy that aroused the camp with its shrill
pain and terror as it fled back from the wolf-cub that had waylaid
it.

But White Fang's reprisals did not cease, even when the young dogs
had learned thoroughly that they must stay together.  He attacked
them when he caught them alone, and they attacked him when they
were bunched.  The sight of him was sufficient to start them
rushing after him, at which times his swiftness usually carried him
into safety.  But woe the dog that outran his fellows in such
pursuit!  White Fang had learned to turn suddenly upon the pursuer
that was ahead of the pack and thoroughly to rip him up before the
pack could arrive.  This occurred with great frequency, for, once
in full cry, the dogs were prone to forget themselves in the
excitement of the chase, while White Fang never forgot himself.
Stealing backward glances as he ran, he was always ready to whirl
around and down the overzealous pursuer that outran his fellows.

Young dogs are bound to play, and out of the exigencies of the
situation they realised their play in this mimic warfare.  Thus it
was that the hunt of White Fang became their chief game - a deadly
game, withal, and at all times a serious game.  He, on the other
hand, being the fastest-footed, was unafraid to venture anywhere.
During the period that he waited vainly for his mother to come
back, he led the pack many a wild chase through the adjacent woods.
But the pack invariably lost him.  Its noise and outcry warned him
of its presence, while he ran alone, velvet-footed, silently, a
moving shadow among the trees after the manner of his father and
mother before him.  Further he was more directly connected with the
Wild than they; and he knew more of its secrets and stratagems.  A
favourite trick of his was to lose his trail in running water and
then lie quietly in a near-by thicket while their baffled cries
arose around him.

Hated by his kind and by mankind, indomitable, perpetually warred
upon and himself waging perpetual war, his development was rapid
and one-sided.  This was no soil for kindliness and affection to
blossom in.  Of such things he had not the faintest glimmering.
The code he learned was to obey the strong and to oppress the weak.
Grey Beaver was a god, and strong.  Therefore White Fang obeyed
him.  But the dog younger or smaller than himself was weak, a thing
to be destroyed.  His development was in the direction of power.
In order to face the constant danger of hurt and even of
destruction, his predatory and protective faculties were unduly
developed.  He became quicker of movement than the other dogs,
swifter of foot, craftier, deadlier, more lithe, more lean with
ironlike muscle and sinew, more enduring, more cruel, more
ferocious, and more intelligent.  He had to become all these
things, else he would not have held his own nor survive the hostile
environment in which he found himself.
<--split-->
CHAPTER IV - THE TRAIL OF THE GODS

In the fall of the year, when the days were shortening and the bite
of the frost was coming into the air, White Fang got his chance for
liberty.  For several days there had been a great hubbub in the
village.  The summer camp was being dismantled, and the tribe, bag
and baggage, was preparing to go off to the fall hunting.  White
Fang watched it all with eager eyes, and when the tepees began to
come down and the canoes were loading at the bank, he understood.
Already the canoes were departing, and some had disappeared down
the river.

Quite deliberately he determined to stay behind.  He waited his
opportunity to slink out of camp to the woods.  Here, in the
running stream where ice was beginning to form, he hid his trail.
Then he crawled into the heart of a dense thicket and waited.  The
time passed by, and he slept intermittently for hours.  Then he was
aroused by Grey Beaver's voice calling him by name.  There were
other voices.  White Fang could hear Grey Beaver's squaw taking
part in the search, and Mit-sah, who was Grey Beaver's son.

White Fang trembled with fear, and though the impulse came to crawl
out of his hiding-place, he resisted it.  After a time the voices
died away, and some time after that he crept out to enjoy the
success of his undertaking.  Darkness was coming on, and for a
while he played about among the trees, pleasuring in his freedom.
Then, and quite suddenly, he became aware of loneliness.  He sat
down to consider, listening to the silence of the forest and
perturbed by it.  That nothing moved nor sounded, seemed ominous.
He felt the lurking of danger, unseen and unguessed.  He was
suspicious of the looming bulks of the trees and of the dark
shadows that might conceal all manner of perilous things.

Then it was cold.  Here was no warm side of a tepee against which
to snuggle.  The frost was in his feet, and he kept lifting first
one fore-foot and then the other.  He curved his bushy tail around
to cover them, and at the same time he saw a vision.  There was
nothing strange about it.  Upon his inward sight was impressed a
succession of memory-pictures.  He saw the camp again, the tepees,
and the blaze of the fires.  He heard the shrill voices of the
women, the gruff basses of the men, and the snarling of the dogs.
He was hungry, and he remembered pieces of meat and fish that had
been thrown him.  Here was no meat, nothing but a threatening and
inedible silence.

His bondage had softened him.  Irresponsibility had weakened him.
He had forgotten how to shift for himself.  The night yawned about
him.  His senses, accustomed to the hum and bustle of the camp,
used to the continuous impact of sights and sounds, were now left
idle.  There was nothing to do, nothing to see nor hear.  They
strained to catch some interruption of the silence and immobility
of nature.  They were appalled by inaction and by the feel of
something terrible impending.

He gave a great start of fright.  A colossal and formless something
was rushing across the field of his vision.  It was a tree-shadow
flung by the moon, from whose face the clouds had been brushed
away.  Reassured, he whimpered softly; then he suppressed the
whimper for fear that it might attract the attention of the lurking
dangers.

A tree, contracting in the cool of the night, made a loud noise.
It was directly above him.  He yelped in his fright.  A panic
seized him, and he ran madly toward the village.  He knew an
overpowering desire for the protection and companionship of man.
In his nostrils was the smell of the camp-smoke.  In his ears the
camp-sounds and cries were ringing loud.  He passed out of the
forest and into the moonlit open where were no shadows nor
darknesses.  But no village greeted his eyes.  He had forgotten.
The village had gone away.

His wild flight ceased abruptly.  There was no place to which to
flee.  He slunk forlornly through the deserted camp, smelling the
rubbish-heaps and the discarded rags and tags of the gods.  He
would have been glad for the rattle of stones about him, flung by
an angry squaw, glad for the hand of Grey Beaver descending upon
him in wrath; while he would have welcomed with delight Lip-lip and
the whole snarling, cowardly pack.

He came to where Grey Beaver's tepee had stood.  In the centre of
the space it had occupied, he sat down.  He pointed his nose at the
moon.  His throat was afflicted by rigid spasms, his mouth opened,
and in a heart-broken cry bubbled up his loneliness and fear, his
grief for Kiche, all his past sorrows and miseries as well as his
apprehension of sufferings and dangers to come.  It was the long
wolf-howl, full-throated and mournful, the first howl he had ever
uttered.

The coming of daylight dispelled his fears but increased his
loneliness.  The naked earth, which so shortly before had been so
populous; thrust his loneliness more forcibly upon him.  It did not
take him long to make up his mind.  He plunged into the forest and
followed the river bank down the stream.  All day he ran.  He did
not rest.  He seemed made to run on for ever.  His iron-like body
ignored fatigue.  And even after fatigue came, his heritage of
endurance braced him to endless endeavour and enabled him to drive
his complaining body onward.

Where the river swung in against precipitous bluffs, he climbed the
high mountains behind.  Rivers and streams that entered the main
river he forded or swam.  Often he took to the rim-ice that was
beginning to form, and more than once he crashed through and
struggled for life in the icy current.  Always he was on the
lookout for the trail of the gods where it might leave the river
and proceed inland.

White Fang was intelligent beyond the average of his kind; yet his
mental vision was not wide enough to embrace the other bank of the
Mackenzie.  What if the trail of the gods led out on that side?  It
never entered his head.  Later on, when he had travelled more and
grown older and wiser and come to know more of trails and rivers,
it might be that he could grasp and apprehend such a possibility.
But that mental power was yet in the future.  Just now he ran
blindly, his own bank of the Mackenzie alone entering into his
calculations.

All night he ran, blundering in the darkness into mishaps and
obstacles that delayed but did not daunt.  By the middle of the
second day he had been running continuously for thirty hours, and
the iron of his flesh was giving out.  It was the endurance of his
mind that kept him going.  He had not eaten in forty hours, and he
was weak with hunger.  The repeated drenchings in the icy water had
likewise had their effect on him.  His handsome coat was draggled.
The broad pads of his feet were bruised and bleeding.  He had begun
to limp, and this limp increased with the hours.  To make it worse,
the light of the sky was obscured and snow began to fall - a raw,
moist, melting, clinging snow, slippery under foot, that hid from
him the landscape he traversed, and that covered over the
inequalities of the ground so that the way of his feet was more
difficult and painful.

Grey Beaver had intended camping that night on the far bank of the
Mackenzie, for it was in that direction that the hunting lay.  But
on the near bank, shortly before dark, a moose coming down to
drink, had been espied by Kloo-kooch, who was Grey Beaver's squaw.
Now, had not the moose come down to drink, had not Mit-sah been
steering out of the course because of the snow, had not Kloo-kooch
sighted the moose, and had not Grey Beaver killed it with a lucky
shot from his rifle, all subsequent things would have happened
differently.  Grey Beaver would not have camped on the near side of
the Mackenzie, and White Fang would have passed by and gone on,
either to die or to find his way to his wild brothers and become
one of them - a wolf to the end of his days.

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.
<--split-->
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 a lordship based upon superior intelligence and brute
strength.  There was something in the fibre of White Fang's being
that made his lordship a thing to be desired, else he would not
have come back from the Wild when he did to tender his allegiance.
There were deeps in his nature which had never been sounded.  A
kind word, a caressing touch of the hand, on the part of Grey
Beaver, might have sounded these deeps; but Grey Beaver did not
caress, nor speak kind words.  It was not his way.  His primacy was
savage, and savagely he ruled, administering justice with a club,
punishing transgression with the pain of a blow, and rewarding
merit, not by kindness, but by withholding a blow.

So White Fang knew nothing of the heaven a man's hand might contain
for him.  Besides, he did not like the hands of the man-animals.
He was suspicious of them.  It was true that they sometimes gave
meat, but more often they gave hurt.  Hands were things to keep
away from.  They hurled stones, wielded sticks and clubs and whips,
administered slaps and clouts, and, when they touched him, were
cunning to hurt with pinch and twist and wrench.  In strange
villages he had encountered the hands of the children and learned
that they were cruel to hurt.  Also, he had once nearly had an eye
poked out by a toddling papoose.  From these experiences he became
suspicious of all children.  He could not tolerate them.  When they
came near with their ominous hands, he got up.

It was in a village at the Great Slave Lake, that, in the course of
resenting the evil of the hands of the man-animals, he came to
modify the law that he had learned from Grey Beaver:  namely, that
the unpardonable crime was to bite one of the gods.  In this
village, after the custom of all dogs in all villages, White Fang
went foraging, for food.  A boy was chopping frozen moose-meat with
an axe, and the chips were flying in the snow.  White Fang, sliding
by in quest of meat, stopped and began to eat the chips.  He
observed the boy lay down the axe and take up a stout club.  White
Fang sprang clear, just in time to escape the descending blow.  The
boy pursued him, and he, a stranger in the village, fled between
two tepees to find himself cornered against a high earth bank.

There was no escape for White Fang.  The only way out was between
the two tepees, and this the boy guarded.  Holding his club
prepared to strike, he drew in on his cornered quarry.  White Fang
was furious.  He faced the boy, bristling and snarling, his sense
of justice outraged.  He knew the law of forage.  All the wastage
of meat, such as the frozen chips, belonged to the dog that found
it.  He had done no wrong, broken no law, yet here was this boy
preparing to give him a beating.  White Fang scarcely knew what
happened.  He did it in a surge of rage.  And he did it so quickly
that the boy did not know either.  All the boy knew was that he had
in some unaccountable way been overturned into the snow, and that
his club-hand had been ripped wide open by White Fang's teeth.

But White Fang knew that he had broken the law of the gods.  He had
driven his teeth into the sacred flesh of one of them, and could
expect nothing but a most terrible punishment.  He fled away to
Grey Beaver, behind whose protecting legs he crouched when the
bitten boy and the boy's family came, demanding vengeance.  But
they went away with vengeance unsatisfied.  Grey Beaver defended
White Fang.  So did Mit-sah and Kloo-kooch.  White Fang, listening
to the wordy war and watching the angry gestures, knew that his act
was justified.  And so it came that he learned there were gods and
gods.  There were his gods, and there were other gods, and between
them there was a difference.  Justice or injustice, it was all the
same, he must take all things from the hands of his own gods.  But
he was not compelled to take injustice from the other gods.  It was
his privilege to resent it with his teeth.  And this also was a law
of the gods.

Before the day was out, White Fang was to learn more about this
law.  Mit-sah, alone, gathering firewood in the forest, encountered
the boy that had been bitten.  With him were other boys.  Hot words
passed.  Then all the boys attacked Mit-sah.  It was going hard
with him.  Blows were raining upon him from all sides.  White Fang
looked on at first.  This was an affair of the gods, and no concern
of his.  Then he realised that this was Mit-sah, one of his own
particular gods, who was being maltreated.  It was no reasoned
impulse that made White Fang do what he then did.  A mad rush of
anger sent him leaping in amongst the combatants.  Five minutes
later the landscape was covered with fleeing boys, many of whom
dripped blood upon the snow in token that White Fang's teeth had
not been idle.  When Mit-sah told the story in camp, Grey Beaver
ordered meat to be given to White Fang.  He ordered much meat to be
given, and White Fang, gorged and sleepy by the fire, knew that the
law had received its verification.

It was in line with these experiences that White Fang came to learn
the law of property and the duty of the defence of property.  From
the protection of his god's body to the protection of his god's
possessions was a step, and this step he made.  What was his god's
was to be defended against all the world - even to the extent of
biting other gods.  Not only was such an act sacrilegious in its
nature, but it was fraught with peril.  The gods were all-powerful,
and a dog was no match against them; yet White Fang learned to face
them, fiercely belligerent and unafraid.  Duty rose above fear, and
thieving gods learned to leave Grey Beaver's property alone.

One thing, in this connection, White Fang quickly learnt, and that
was that a thieving god was usually a cowardly god and prone to run
away at the sounding of the alarm.  Also, he learned that but brief
time elapsed between his sounding of the alarm and Grey Beaver
coming to his aid.  He came to know that it was not fear of him
that drove the thief away, but fear of Grey Beaver.  White Fang did
not give the alarm by barking.  He never barked.  His method was to
drive straight at the intruder, and to sink his teeth in if he
could.  Because he was morose and solitary, having nothing to do
with the other dogs, he was unusually fitted to guard his master's
property; and in this he was encouraged and trained by Grey Beaver.
One result of this was to make White Fang more ferocious and
indomitable, and more solitary.

The months went by, binding stronger and stronger the covenant
between dog and man.  This was the ancient covenant that the first
wolf that came in from the Wild entered into with man.  And, like
all succeeding wolves and wild dogs that had done likewise, White
Fang worked the covenant out for himself.  The terms were simple.
For the possession of a flesh-and-blood god, he exchanged his own
liberty.  Food and fire, protection and companionship, were some of
the things he received from the god.  In return, he guarded the
god's property, defended his body, worked for him, and obeyed him.

The possession of a god implies service.  White Fang's was a
service of duty and awe, but not of love.  He did not know what
love was.  He had no experience of love.  Kiche was a remote
memory.  Besides, not only had he abandoned the Wild and his kind
when he gave himself up to man, but the terms of the covenant were
such that if ever he met Kiche again he would not desert his god to
go with her.  His allegiance to man seemed somehow a law of his
being greater than the love of liberty, of kind and kin.
<--split-->
CHAPTER VI - THE FAMINE

The spring of the year was at hand when Grey Beaver finished his
long journey.  It was April, and White Fang was a year old when he
pulled into the home villages and was loosed from the harness by
Mit-sah.  Though a long way from his full growth, White Fang, next
to Lip-lip, was the largest yearling in the village.  Both from his
father, the wolf, and from Kiche, he had inherited stature and
strength, and already he was measuring up alongside the full-grown
dogs.  But he had not yet grown compact.  His body was slender and
rangy, and his strength more stringy than massive, His coat was the
true wolf-grey, and to all appearances he was true wolf himself.
The quarter-strain of dog he had inherited from Kiche had left no
mark on him physically, though it had played its part in his mental
make-up.

He wandered through the village, recognising with staid
satisfaction the various gods he had known before the long journey.
Then there were the dogs, puppies growing up like himself, and
grown dogs that did not look so large and formidable as the memory
pictures he retained of them.  Also, he stood less in fear of them
than formerly, stalking among them with a certain careless ease
that was as new to him as it was enjoyable.

There was Baseek, a grizzled old fellow that in his younger days
had but to uncover his fangs to send White Fang cringing and
crouching to the right about.  From him White Fang had learned much
of his own insignificance; and from him he was now to learn much of
the change and development that had taken place in himself.  While
Baseek had been growing weaker with age, White Fang had been
growing stronger with youth.

It was at the cutting-up of a moose, fresh-killed, that White Fang
learned of the changed relations in which he stood to the dog-
world.  He had got for himself a hoof and part of the shin-bone, to
which quite a bit of meat was attached.  Withdrawn from the
immediate scramble of the other dogs - in fact out of sight behind
a thicket - he was devouring his prize, when Baseek rushed in upon
him.  Before he knew what he was doing, he had slashed the intruder
twice and sprung clear.  Baseek was surprised by the other's
temerity and swiftness of attack.  He stood, gazing stupidly across
at White Fang, the raw, red shin-bone between them.

Baseek was old, and already he had come to know the increasing
valour of the dogs it had been his wont to bully.  Bitter
experiences these, which, perforce, he swallowed, calling upon all
his wisdom to cope with them.  In the old days he would have sprung
upon White Fang in a fury of righteous wrath.  But now his waning
powers would not permit such a course.  He bristled fiercely and
looked ominously across the shin-bone at White Fang.  And White
Fang, resurrecting quite a deal of the old awe, seemed to wilt and
to shrink in upon himself and grow small, as he cast about in his
mind for a way to beat a retreat not too inglorious.

And right here Baseek erred.  Had he contented himself with looking
fierce and ominous, all would have been well.  White Fang, on the
verge of retreat, would have retreated, leaving the meat to him.
But Baseek did not wait.  He considered the victory already his and
stepped forward to the meat.  As he bent his head carelessly to
smell it, White Fang bristled slightly.  Even then it was not too
late for Baseek to retrieve the situation.  Had he merely stood
over the meat, head up and glowering, White Fang would ultimately
have slunk away.  But the fresh meat was strong in Baseek's
nostrils, and greed urged him to take a bite of it.

This was too much for White Fang.  Fresh upon his months of mastery
over his own team-mates, it was beyond his self-control to stand
idly by while another devoured the meat that belonged to him.  He
struck, after his custom, without warning.  With the first slash,
Baseek's right ear was ripped into ribbons.  He was astounded at
the suddenness of it.  But more things, and most grievous ones,
were happening with equal suddenness.  He was knocked off his feet.
His throat was bitten.  While he was struggling to his feet the
young dog sank teeth twice into his shoulder.  The swiftness of it
was bewildering.  He made a futile rush at White Fang, clipping the
empty air with an outraged snap.  The next moment his nose was laid
open, and he was staggering backward away from the meat.

The situation was now reversed.  White Fang stood over the shin-
bone, bristling and menacing, while Baseek stood a little way off,
preparing to retreat.  He dared not risk a fight with this young
lightning-flash, and again he knew, and more bitterly, the
enfeeblement of oncoming age.  His attempt to maintain his dignity
was heroic.  Calmly turning his back upon young dog and shin-bone,
as though both were beneath his notice and unworthy of his
consideration, he stalked grandly away.  Nor, until well out of
sight, did he stop to lick his bleeding wounds.

The effect on White Fang was to give him a greater faith in
himself, and a greater pride.  He walked less softly among the
grown dogs; his attitude toward them was less compromising.  Not
that he went out of his way looking for trouble.  Far from it.  But
upon his way he demanded consideration.  He stood upon his right to
go his way unmolested and to give trail to no dog.  He had to be
taken into account, that was all.  He was no longer to be
disregarded and ignored, as was the lot of puppies, and as
continued to be the lot of the puppies that were his team-mates.
They got out of the way, gave trail to the grown dogs, and gave up
meat to them under compulsion.  But White Fang, uncompanionable,
solitary, morose, scarcely looking to right or left, redoubtable,
forbidding of aspect, remote and alien, was accepted as an equal by
his puzzled elders.  They quickly learned to leave him alone,
neither venturing hostile acts nor making overtures of
friendliness.  If they left him alone, he left them alone - a state
of affairs that they found, after a few encounters, to be pre-
eminently desirable.

In midsummer White Fang had an experience.  Trotting along in his
silent way to investigate a new tepee which had been erected on the
edge of the village while he was away with the hunters after moose,
he came full upon Kiche.  He paused and looked at her.  He
remembered her vaguely, but he REMEMBERED her, and that was more
than could be said for her.  She lifted her lip at him in the old
snarl of menace, and his memory became clear.  His forgotten
cubhood, all that was associated with that familiar snarl, rushed
back to him.  Before he had known the gods, she had been to him the
centre-pin of the universe.  The old familiar feelings of that time
came back upon him, surged up within him.  He bounded towards her
joyously, and she met him with shrewd fangs that laid his cheek
open to the bone.  He did not understand.  He backed away,
bewildered and puzzled.

But it was not Kiche's fault.  A wolf-mother was not made to
remember her cubs of a year or so before.  So she did not remember
White Fang.  He was a strange animal, an intruder; and her present
litter of puppies gave her the right to resent such intrusion.

One of the puppies sprawled up to White Fang.  They were half-
brothers, only they did not know it.  White Fang sniffed the puppy
curiously, whereupon Kiche rushed upon him, gashing is face a
second time.  He backed farther away.  All the old memories and
associations died down again and passed into the grave from which
they had been resurrected.  He looked at Kiche licking her puppy
and stopping now and then to snarl at him.  She was without value
to him.  He had learned to get along without her.  Her meaning was
forgotten.  There was no place for her in his scheme of things, as
there was no place for him in hers.

He was still standing, stupid and bewildered, the memories
forgotten, wondering what it was all about, when Kiche attacked him
a third time, intent on driving him away altogether from the
vicinity.  And White Fang allowed himself to be driven away.  This
was a female of his kind, and it was a law of his kind that the
males must not fight the females.  He did not know anything about
this law, for it was no generalisation of the mind, not a something
acquired by experience of the world.  He knew it as a secret
prompting, as an urge of instinct - of the same instinct that made
him howl at the moon and stars of nights, and that made him fear
death and the unknown.

The months went by.  White Fang grew stronger, heavier, and more
compact, while his character was developing along the lines laid
down by his heredity and his environment.  His heredity was a life-
stuff that may be likened to clay.  It possessed many
possibilities, was capable of being moulded into many different
forms.  Environment served to model the clay, to give it a
particular form.  Thus, had White Fang never come in to the fires
of man, the Wild would have moulded him into a true wolf.  But the
gods had given him a different environment, and he was moulded into
a dog that was rather wolfish, but that was a dog and not a wolf.

And so, according to the clay of his nature and the pressure of his
surroundings, his character was being moulded into a certain
particular shape.  There was no escaping it.  He was becoming more
morose, more uncompanionable, more solitary, more ferocious; while
the dogs were learning more and more that it was better to be at
peace with him than at war, and Grey Beaver was coming to prize him
more greatly with the passage of each day.

White Fang, seeming to sum up strength in all his qualities,
nevertheless suffered from one besetting weakness.  He could not
stand being laughed at.  The laughter of men was a hateful thing.
They might laugh among themselves about anything they pleased
except himself, and he did not mind.  But the moment laughter was
turned upon him he would fly into a most terrible rage.  Grave,
dignified, sombre, a laugh made him frantic to ridiculousness.  It
so outraged him and upset him that for hours he would behave like a
demon.  And woe to the dog that at such times ran foul of him.  He
knew the law too well to take it out of Grey Beaver; behind Grey
Beaver were a club and godhead.  But behind the dogs there was
nothing but space, and into this space they flew when White Fang
came on the scene, made mad by laughter.

In the third year of his life there came a great famine to the
Mackenzie Indians.  In the summer the fish failed.  In the winter
the cariboo forsook their accustomed track.  Moose were scarce, the
rabbits almost disappeared, hunting and preying animals perished.
Denied their usual food-supply, weakened by hunger, they fell upon
and devoured one another.  Only the strong survived.  White Fang's
gods were always hunting animals.  The old and the weak of them
died of hunger.  There was wailing in the village, where the women
and children went without in order that what little they had might
go into the bellies of the lean and hollow-eyed hunters who trod
the forest in the vain pursuit of meat.

To such extremity were the gods driven that they ate the soft-
tanned leather of their mocassins and mittens, while the dogs ate
the harnesses off their backs and the very whip-lashes.  Also, the
dogs ate one another, and also the gods ate the dogs.  The weakest
and the more worthless were eaten first.  The dogs that still
lived, looked on and understood.  A few of the boldest and wisest
forsook the fires of the gods, which had now become a shambles, and
fled into the forest, where, in the end, they starved to death or
were eaten by wolves.

In this time of misery, White Fang, too, stole away into the woods.
He was better fitted for the life than the other dogs, for he had
the training of his cubhood to guide him.  Especially adept did he
become in stalking small living things.  He would lie concealed for
hours, following every movement of a cautious tree-squirrel,
waiting, with a patience as huge as the hunger he suffered from,
until the squirrel ventured out upon the ground.  Even then, White
Fang was not premature.  He waited until he was sure of striking
before the squirrel could gain a tree-refuge.  Then, and not until
then, would he flash from his hiding-place, a grey projectile,
incredibly swift, never failing its mark - the fleeing squirrel
that fled not fast enough.

Successful as he was with squirrels, there was one difficulty that
prevented him from living and growing fat on them.  There were not
enough squirrels.  So he was driven to hunt still smaller things.
So acute did his hunger become at times that he was not above
rooting out wood-mice from their burrows in the ground.  Nor did he
scorn to do battle with a weasel as hungry as himself and many
times more ferocious.

In the worst pinches of the famine he stole back to the fires of
the gods.  But he did not go into the fires.  He lurked in the
forest, avoiding discovery and robbing the snares at the rare
intervals when game was caught.  He even robbed Grey Beaver's snare
of a rabbit at a time when Grey Beaver staggered and tottered
through the forest, sitting down often to rest, what of weakness
and of shortness of breath.

One day While Fang encountered a young wolf, gaunt and scrawny,
loose-jointed with famine.  Had he not been hungry himself, White
Fang might have gone with him and eventually found his way into the
pack amongst his wild brethren.  As it was, he ran the young wolf
down and killed and ate him.

Fortune seemed to favour him.  Always, when hardest pressed for
food, he found something to kill.  Again, when he was weak, it was
his luck that none of the larger preying animals chanced upon him.
Thus, he was strong from the two days' eating a lynx had afforded
him when the hungry wolf-pack ran full tilt upon him.  It was a
long, cruel chase, but he was better nourished than they, and in
the end outran them.  And not only did he outrun them, but,
circling widely back on his track, he gathered in one of his
exhausted pursuers.

After that he left that part of the country and journeyed over to
the valley wherein he had been born.  Here, in the old lair, he
encountered Kiche.  Up to her old tricks, she, too, had fled the
inhospitable fires of the gods and gone back to her old refuge to
give birth to her young.  Of this litter but one remained alive
when White Fang came upon the scene, and this one was not destined
to live long.  Young life had little chance in such a famine.

Kiche's greeting of her grown son was anything but affectionate.
But White Fang did not mind.  He had outgrown his mother.  So he
turned tail philosophically and trotted on up the stream.  At the
forks he took the turning to the left, where he found the lair of
the lynx with whom his mother and he had fought long before.  Here,
in the abandoned lair, he settled down and rested for a day.

During the early summer, in the last days of the famine, he met
Lip-lip, who had likewise taken to the woods, where he had eked out
a miserable existence.

White Fang came upon him unexpectedly.  Trotting in opposite
directions along the base of a high bluff, they rounded a corner of
rock and found themselves face to face.  They paused with instant
alarm, and looked at each other suspiciously.

White Fang was in splendid condition.  His hunting had been good,
and for a week he had eaten his fill.  He was even gorged from his
latest kill.  But in the moment he looked at Lip-lip his hair rose
on end all along his back.  It was an involuntary bristling on his
part, the physical state that in the past had always accompanied
the mental state produced in him by Lip-lip's bullying and
persecution.  As in the past he had bristled and snarled at sight
of Lip-lip, so now, and automatically, he bristled and snarled.  He
did not waste any time.  The thing was done thoroughly and with
despatch.  Lip-lip essayed to back away, but White Fang struck him
hard, shoulder to shoulder.  Lip-lip was overthrown and rolled upon
his back.  White Fang's teeth drove into the scrawny throat.  There
was a death-struggle, during which White Fang walked around, stiff-
legged and observant.  Then he resumed his course and trotted on
along the base of the bluff.

One day, not long after, he came to the edge of the forest, where a
narrow stretch of open land sloped down to the Mackenzie.  He had
been over this ground before, when it was bare, but now a village
occupied it.  Still hidden amongst the trees, he paused to study
the situation.  Sights and sounds and scents were familiar to him.
It was the old village changed to a new place.  But sights and
sounds and smells were different from those he had last had when he
fled away from it.  There was no whimpering nor wailing.  Contented
sounds saluted his ear, and when he heard the angry voice of a
woman he knew it to be the anger that proceeds from a full stomach.
And there was a smell in the air of fish.  There was food.  The
famine was gone.  He came out boldly from the forest and trotted
into camp straight to Grey Beaver's tepee.  Grey Beaver was not
there; but Kloo-kooch welcomed him with glad cries and the whole of
a fresh-caught fish, and he lay down to wait Grey Beaver's coming.