PART IV

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CHAPTER I

THE ENEMY OF HIS KIND



Had there been in White Fang's nature any possibility, no matter

how remote, of his ever coming to fraternise with his kind, such

possibility was irretrievably destroyed when he was made leader of

the sled-team. For now the dogs hated him - hated him for the

extra meat bestowed upon him by Mit-sah; hated him for all the real

and fancied favours he received; hated him for that he fled always

at the head of the team, his waving brush of a tail and his

perpetually retreating hind-quarters for ever maddening their eyes.



And White Fang just as bitterly hated them back. Being sled-leader

was anything but gratifying to him. To be compelled to run away

before the yelling pack, every dog of which, for three years, he

had thrashed and mastered, was almost more than he could endure.

But endure it he must, or perish, and the life that was in him had

no desire to perish out. The moment Mit-sah gave his order for the

start, that moment the whole team, with eager, savage cries, sprang

forward at White Fang.



There was no defence for him. If he turned upon them, Mit-sah

would throw the stinging lash of the whip into his face. Only

remained to him to run away. He could not encounter that howling

horde with his tail and hind-quarters. These were scarcely fit

weapons with which to meet the many merciless fangs. So run away

he did, violating his own nature and pride with every leap he made,

and leaping all day long.



One cannot violate the promptings of one's nature without having

that nature recoil upon itself. Such a recoil is like that of a

hair, made to grow out from the body, turning unnaturally upon the

direction of its growth and growing into the body - a rankling,

festering thing of hurt. And so with White Fang. Every urge of

his being impelled him to spring upon the pack that cried at his

heels, but it was the will of the gods that this should not be; and

behind the will, to enforce it, was the whip of cariboo-gut with

its biting thirty-foot lash. So White Fang could only eat his

heart in bitterness and develop a hatred and malice commensurate

with the ferocity and indomitability of his nature.



If ever a creature was the enemy of its kind, White Fang was that

creature. He asked no quarter, gave none. He was continually

marred and scarred by the teeth of the pack, and as continually he

left his own marks upon the pack. Unlike most leaders, who, when

camp was made and the dogs were unhitched, huddled near to the gods

for protection, White Fang disdained such protection. He walked

boldly about the camp, inflicting punishment in the night for what

he had suffered in the day. In the time before he was made leader

of the team, the pack had learned to get out of his way. But now

it was different. Excited by the day-long pursuit of him, swayed

subconsciously by the insistent iteration on their brains of the

sight of him fleeing away, mastered by the feeling of mastery

enjoyed all day, the dogs could not bring themselves to give way to

him. When he appeared amongst them, there was always a squabble.

His progress was marked by snarl and snap and growl. The very

atmosphere he breathed was surcharged with hatred and malice, and

this but served to increase the hatred and malice within him.



When Mit-sah cried out his command for the team to stop, White Fang

obeyed. At first this caused trouble for the other dogs. All of

them would spring upon the hated leader only to find the tables

turned. Behind him would be Mit-sah, the great whip singing in his

hand. So the dogs came to understand that when the team stopped by

order, White Fang was to be let alone. But when White Fang stopped

without orders, then it was allowed them to spring upon him and

destroy him if they could. After several experiences, White Fang

never stopped without orders. He learned quickly. It was in the

nature of things, that he must learn quickly if he were to survive

the unusually severe conditions under which life was vouchsafed

him.



But the dogs could never learn the lesson to leave him alone in

camp. Each day, pursuing him and crying defiance at him, the

lesson of the previous night was erased, and that night would have

to be learned over again, to be as immediately forgotten. Besides,

there was a greater consistence in their dislike of him. They

sensed between themselves and him a difference of kind - cause

sufficient in itself for hostility. Like him, they were

domesticated wolves. But they had been domesticated for

generations. Much of the Wild had been lost, so that to them the

Wild was the unknown, the terrible, the ever-menacing and ever

warring. But to him, in appearance and action and impulse, still

clung the Wild. He symbolised it, was its personification: so

that when they showed their teeth to him they were defending

themselves against the powers of destruction that lurked in the

shadows of the forest and in the dark beyond the camp-fire.



But there was one lesson the dogs did learn, and that was to keep

together. White Fang was too terrible for any of them to face

single-handed. They met him with the mass-formation, otherwise he

would have killed them, one by one, in a night. As it was, he

never had a chance to kill them. He might roll a dog off its feet,

but the pack would be upon him before he could follow up and

deliver the deadly throat-stroke. At the first hint of conflict,

the whole team drew together and faced him. The dogs had quarrels

among themselves, but these were forgotten when trouble was brewing

with White Fang.



On the other hand, try as they would, they could not kill White

Fang. He was too quick for them, too formidable, too wise. He

avoided tight places and always backed out of it when they bade

fair to surround him. While, as for getting him off his feet,

there was no dog among them capable of doing the trick. His feet

clung to the earth with the same tenacity that he clung to life.

For that matter, life and footing were synonymous in this unending

warfare with the pack, and none knew it better than White Fang.



So he became the enemy of his kind, domesticated wolves that they

were, softened by the fires of man, weakened in the sheltering

shadow of man's strength. White Fang was bitter and implacable.

The clay of him was so moulded. He declared a vendetta against all

dogs. And so terribly did he live this vendetta that Grey Beaver,

fierce savage himself, could not but marvel at White Fang's

ferocity. Never, he swore, had there been the like of this animal;

and the Indians in strange villages swore likewise when they

considered the tale of his killings amongst their dogs.



When White Fang was nearly five years old, Grey Beaver took him on

another great journey, and long remembered was the havoc he worked

amongst the dogs of the many villages along the Mackenzie, across

the Rockies, and down the Porcupine to the Yukon. He revelled in

the vengeance he wreaked upon his kind. They were ordinary,

unsuspecting dogs. They were not prepared for his swiftness and

directness, for his attack without warning. They did not know him

for what he was, a lightning-flash of slaughter. They bristled up

to him, stiff-legged and challenging, while he, wasting no time on

elaborate preliminaries, snapping into action like a steel spring,

was at their throats and destroying them before they knew what was

happening and while they were yet in the throes of surprise.



He became an adept at fighting. He economised. He never wasted

his strength, never tussled. He was in too quickly for that, and,

if he missed, was out again too quickly. The dislike of the wolf

for close quarters was his to an unusual degree. He could not

endure a prolonged contact with another body. It smacked of

danger. It made him frantic. He must be away, free, on his own

legs, touching no living thing. It was the Wild still clinging to

him, asserting itself through him. This feeling had been

accentuated by the Ishmaelite life he had led from his puppyhood.

Danger lurked in contacts. It was the trap, ever the trap, the

fear of it lurking deep in the life of him, woven into the fibre of

him



In consequence, the strange dogs he encountered had no chance

against him. He eluded their fangs. He got them, or got away,

himself untouched in either event. In the natural course of things

there were exceptions to this. There were times when several dogs,

pitching on to him, punished him before he could get away; and

there were times when a single dog scored deeply on him. But these

were accidents. In the main, so efficient a fighter had he become,

he went his way unscathed.



Another advantage he possessed was that of correctly judging time

and distance. Not that he did this consciously, however. He did

not calculate such things. It was all automatic. His eyes saw

correctly, and the nerves carried the vision correctly to his

brain. The parts of him were better adjusted than those of the

average dog. They worked together more smoothly and steadily. His

was a better, far better, nervous, mental, and muscular co-

ordination. When his eyes conveyed to his brain the moving image

of an action, his brain without conscious effort, knew the space

that limited that action and the time required for its completion.

Thus, he could avoid the leap of another dog, or the drive of its

fangs, and at the same moment could seize the infinitesimal

fraction of time in which to deliver his own attack. Body and

brain, his was a more perfected mechanism. Not that he was to be

praised for it. Nature had been more generous to him than to the

average animal, that was all.



It was in the summer that White Fang arrived at Fort Yukon. Grey

Beaver had crossed the great watershed between Mackenzie and the

Yukon in the late winter, and spent the spring in hunting among the

western outlying spurs of the Rockies. Then, after the break-up of

the ice on the Porcupine, he had built a canoe and paddled down

that stream to where it effected its junction with the Yukon just

under the Artic circle. Here stood the old Hudson's Bay Company

fort; and here were many Indians, much food, and unprecedented

excitement. It was the summer of 1898, and thousands of gold-

hunters were going up the Yukon to Dawson and the Klondike. Still

hundreds of miles from their goal, nevertheless many of them had

been on the way for a year, and the least any of them had travelled

to get that far was five thousand miles, while some had come from

the other side of the world.



Here Grey Beaver stopped. A whisper of the gold-rush had reached

his ears, and he had come with several bales of furs, and another

of gut-sewn mittens and moccasins. He would not have ventured so

long a trip had he not expected generous profits. But what he had

expected was nothing to what he realised. His wildest dreams had

not exceeded a hundred per cent. profit; he made a thousand per

cent. And like a true Indian, he settled down to trade carefully

and slowly, even if it took all summer and the rest of the winter

to dispose of his goods.



It was at Fort Yukon that White Fang saw his first white men. As

compared with the Indians he had known, they were to him another

race of beings, a race of superior gods. They impressed him as

possessing superior power, and it is on power that godhead rests.

White Fang did not reason it out, did not in his mind make the

sharp generalisation that the white gods were more powerful. It

was a feeling, nothing more, and yet none the less potent. As, in

his puppyhood, the looming bulks of the tepees, man-reared, had

affected him as manifestations of power, so was he affected now by

the houses and the huge fort all of massive logs. Here was power.

Those white gods were strong. They possessed greater mastery over

matter than the gods he had known, most powerful among which was

Grey Beaver. And yet Grey Beaver was as a child-god among these

white-skinned ones.



To be sure, White Fang only felt these things. He was not

conscious of them. Yet it is upon feeling, more often than

thinking, that animals act; and every act White Fang now performed

was based upon the feeling that the white men were the superior

gods. In the first place he was very suspicious of them. There

was no telling what unknown terrors were theirs, what unknown hurts

they could administer. He was curious to observe them, fearful of

being noticed by them. For the first few hours he was content with

slinking around and watching them from a safe distance. Then he

saw that no harm befell the dogs that were near to them, and he

came in closer.



In turn he was an object of great curiosity to them. His wolfish

appearance caught their eyes at once, and they pointed him out to

one another. This act of pointing put White Fang on his guard, and

when they tried to approach him he showed his teeth and backed

away. Not one succeeded in laying a hand on him, and it was well

that they did not.



White Fang soon learned that very few of these gods - not more than

a dozen - lived at this place. Every two or three days a steamer

(another and colossal manifestation of power) came into the bank

and stopped for several hours. The white men came from off these

steamers and went away on them again. There seemed untold numbers

of these white men. In the first day or so, he saw more of them

than he had seen Indians in all his life; and as the days went by

they continued to come up the river, stop, and then go on up the

river out of sight.



But if the white gods were all-powerful, their dogs did not amount

to much. This White Fang quickly discovered by mixing with those

that came ashore with their masters. They were irregular shapes

and sizes. Some were short-legged - too short; others were long-

legged - too long. They had hair instead of fur, and a few had

very little hair at that. And none of them knew how to fight.



As an enemy of his kind, it was in White Fang's province to fight

with them. This he did, and he quickly achieved for them a mighty

contempt. They were soft and helpless, made much noise, and

floundered around clumsily trying to accomplish by main strength

what he accomplished by dexterity and cunning. They rushed

bellowing at him. He sprang to the side. They did not know what

had become of him; and in that moment he struck them on the

shoulder, rolling them off their feet and delivering his stroke at

the throat.



Sometimes this stroke was successful, and a stricken dog rolled in

the dirt, to be pounced upon and torn to pieces by the pack of

Indian dogs that waited. White Fang was wise. He had long since

learned that the gods were made angry when their dogs were killed.

The white men were no exception to this. So he was content, when

he had overthrown and slashed wide the throat of one of their dogs,

to drop back and let the pack go in and do the cruel finishing

work. It was then that the white men rushed in, visiting their

wrath heavily on the pack, while White Fang went free. He would

stand off at a little distance and look on, while stones, clubs,

axes, and all sorts of weapons fell upon his fellows. White Fang

was very wise.



But his fellows grew wise in their own way; and in this White Fang

grew wise with them. They learned that it was when a steamer first

tied to the bank that they had their fun. After the first two or

three strange dogs had been downed and destroyed, the white men

hustled their own animals back on board and wrecked savage

vengeance on the offenders. One white man, having seen his dog, a

setter, torn to pieces before his eyes, drew a revolver. He fired

rapidly, six times, and six of the pack lay dead or dying - another

manifestation of power that sank deep into White Fang's

consciousness.



White Fang enjoyed it all. He did not love his kind, and he was

shrewd enough to escape hurt himself. At first, the killing of the

white men's dogs had been a diversion. After a time it became his

occupation. There was no work for him to do. Grey Beaver was busy

trading and getting wealthy. So White Fang hung around the landing

with the disreputable gang of Indian dogs, waiting for steamers.

With the arrival of a steamer the fun began. After a few minutes,

by the time the white men had got over their surprise, the gang

scattered. The fun was over until the next steamer should arrive.



But it can scarcely be said that White Fang was a member of the

gang. He did not mingle with it, but remained aloof, always

himself, and was even feared by it. It is true, he worked with it.

He picked the quarrel with the strange dog while the gang waited.

And when he had overthrown the strange dog the gang went in to

finish it. But it is equally true that he then withdrew, leaving

the gang to receive the punishment of the outraged gods.



It did not require much exertion to pick these quarrels. All he

had to do, when the strange dogs came ashore, was to show himself.

When they saw him they rushed for him. It was their instinct. He

was the Wild - the unknown, the terrible, the ever-menacing, the

thing that prowled in the darkness around the fires of the primeval

world when they, cowering close to the fires, were reshaping their

instincts, learning to fear the Wild out of which they had come,

and which they had deserted and betrayed. Generation by

generation, down all the generations, had this fear of the Wild

been stamped into their natures. For centuries the Wild had stood

for terror and destruction. And during all this time free licence

had been theirs, from their masters, to kill the things of the

Wild. In doing this they had protected both themselves and the

gods whose companionship they shared



And so, fresh from the soft southern world, these dogs, trotting

down the gang-plank and out upon the Yukon shore had but to see

White Fang to experience the irresistible impulse to rush upon him

and destroy him. They might be town-reared dogs, but the

instinctive fear of the Wild was theirs just the same. Not alone

with their own eyes did they see the wolfish creature in the clear

light of day, standing before them. They saw him with the eyes of

their ancestors, and by their inherited memory they knew White Fang

for the wolf, and they remembered the ancient feud.



All of which served to make White Fang's days enjoyable. If the

sight of him drove these strange dogs upon him, so much the better

for him, so much the worse for them. They looked upon him as

legitimate prey, and as legitimate prey he looked upon them.



Not for nothing had he first seen the light of day in a lonely lair

and fought his first fights with the ptarmigan, the weasel, and the

lynx. And not for nothing had his puppyhood been made bitter by

the persecution of Lip-lip and the whole puppy pack. It might have

been otherwise, and he would then have been otherwise. Had Lip-lip

not existed, he would have passed his puppyhood with the other

puppies and grown up more doglike and with more liking for dogs.

Had Grey Beaver possessed the plummet of affection and love, he

might have sounded the deeps of White Fang's nature and brought up

to the surface all manner of kindly qualities. But these things

had not been so. The clay of White Fang had been moulded until he

became what he was, morose and lonely, unloving and ferocious, the

enemy of all his kind.

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