CHAPTER III--THE REIGN OF HATE

CHAPTER III--THE REIGN OF HATE


Under the tutelage of the mad god, White Fang became a fiend. He was
kept chained in a pen at the rear of the fort, and here Beauty Smith
teased and irritated and drove him wild with petty torments. The man
early discovered White Fang's susceptibility to laughter, and made it a
point after painfully tricking him, to laugh at him. This laughter was
uproarious and scornful, and at the same time the god pointed his finger
derisively at White Fang. At such times reason fled from White Fang, and
in his transports of rage he was even more mad than Beauty Smith.

Formerly, White Fang had been merely the enemy of his kind, withal a
ferocious enemy. He now became the enemy of all things, and more
ferocious than ever. To such an extent was he tormented, that he hated
blindly and without the faintest spark of reason. He hated the chain
that bound him, the men who peered in at him through the slats of the
pen, the dogs that accompanied the men and that snarled malignantly at
him in his helplessness. He hated the very wood of the pen that confined
him. And, first, last, and most of all, he hated Beauty Smith.

But Beauty Smith had a purpose in all that he did to White Fang. One day
a number of men gathered about the pen. Beauty Smith entered, club in
hand, and took the chain off from White Fang's neck. When his master had
gone out, White Fang turned loose and tore around the pen, trying to get
at the men outside. He was magnificently terrible. Fully five feet in
length, and standing two and one-half feet at the shoulder, he far
outweighed a wolf of corresponding size. From his mother he had
inherited the heavier proportions of the dog, so that he weighed, without
any fat and without an ounce of superfluous flesh, over ninety pounds. It
was all muscle, bone, and sinew-fighting flesh in the finest condition.

The door of the pen was being opened again. White Fang paused. Something
unusual was happening. He waited. The door was opened wider. Then a
huge dog was thrust inside, and the door was slammed shut behind him.
White Fang had never seen such a dog (it was a mastiff); but the size and
fierce aspect of the intruder did not deter him. Here was some thing,
not wood nor iron, upon which to wreak his hate. He leaped in with a
flash of fangs that ripped down the side of the mastiff's neck. The
mastiff shook his head, growled hoarsely, and plunged at White Fang. But
White Fang was here, there, and everywhere, always evading and eluding,
and always leaping in and slashing with his fangs and leaping out again
in time to escape punishment.

The men outside shouted and applauded, while Beauty Smith, in an ecstasy
of delight, gloated over the ripping and mangling performed by White
Fang. There was no hope for the mastiff from the first. He was too
ponderous and slow. In the end, while Beauty Smith beat White Fang back
with a club, the mastiff was dragged out by its owner. Then there was a
payment of bets, and money clinked in Beauty Smith's hand.

White Fang came to look forward eagerly to the gathering of the men
around his pen. It meant a fight; and this was the only way that was now
vouchsafed him of expressing the life that was in him. Tormented,
incited to hate, he was kept a prisoner so that there was no way of
satisfying that hate except at the times his master saw fit to put
another dog against him. Beauty Smith had estimated his powers well, for
he was invariably the victor. One day, three dogs were turned in upon
him in succession. Another day a full-grown wolf, fresh-caught from the
Wild, was shoved in through the door of the pen. And on still another
day two dogs were set against him at the same time. This was his
severest fight, and though in the end he killed them both he was himself
half killed in doing it.

In the fall of the year, when the first snows were falling and mush-ice
was running in the river, Beauty Smith took passage for himself and White
Fang on a steamboat bound up the Yukon to Dawson. White Fang had now
achieved a reputation in the land. As "the Fighting Wolf" he was known
far and wide, and the cage in which he was kept on the steam-boat's deck
was usually surrounded by curious men. He raged and snarled at them, or
lay quietly and studied them with cold hatred. Why should he not hate
them? He never asked himself the question. He knew only hate and lost
himself in the passion of it. Life had become a hell to him. He had not
been made for the close confinement wild beasts endure at the hands of
men. And yet it was in precisely this way that he was treated. Men
stared at him, poked sticks between the bars to make him snarl, and then
laughed at him.

They were his environment, these men, and they were moulding the clay of
him into a more ferocious thing than had been intended by Nature.
Nevertheless, Nature had given him plasticity. Where many another animal
would have died or had its spirit broken, he adjusted himself and lived,
and at no expense of the spirit. Possibly Beauty Smith, arch-fiend and
tormentor, was capable of breaking White Fang's spirit, but as yet there
were no signs of his succeeding.

If Beauty Smith had in him a devil, White Fang had another; and the two
of them raged against each other unceasingly. In the days before, White
Fang had had the wisdom to cower down and submit to a man with a club in
his hand; but this wisdom now left him. The mere sight of Beauty Smith
was sufficient to send him into transports of fury. And when they came
to close quarters, and he had been beaten back by the club, he went on
growling and snarling, and showing his fangs. The last growl could never
be extracted from him. No matter how terribly he was beaten, he had
always another growl; and when Beauty Smith gave up and withdrew, the
defiant growl followed after him, or White Fang sprang at the bars of the
cage bellowing his hatred.

When the steamboat arrived at Dawson, White Fang went ashore. But he
still lived a public life, in a cage, surrounded by curious men. He was
exhibited as "the Fighting Wolf," and men paid fifty cents in gold dust
to see him. He was given no rest. Did he lie down to sleep, he was
stirred up by a sharp stick--so that the audience might get its money's
worth. In order to make the exhibition interesting, he was kept in a
rage most of the time. But worse than all this, was the atmosphere in
which he lived. He was regarded as the most fearful of wild beasts, and
this was borne in to him through the bars of the cage. Every word, every
cautious action, on the part of the men, impressed upon him his own
terrible ferocity. It was so much added fuel to the flame of his
fierceness. There could be but one result, and that was that his
ferocity fed upon itself and increased. It was another instance of the
plasticity of his clay, of his capacity for being moulded by the pressure
of environment.

In addition to being exhibited he was a professional fighting animal. At
irregular intervals, whenever a fight could be arranged, he was taken out
of his cage and led off into the woods a few miles from town. Usually
this occurred at night, so as to avoid interference from the mounted
police of the Territory. After a few hours of waiting, when daylight had
come, the audience and the dog with which he was to fight arrived. In
this manner it came about that he fought all sizes and breeds of dogs. It
was a savage land, the men were savage, and the fights were usually to
the death.

Since White Fang continued to fight, it is obvious that it was the other
dogs that died. He never knew defeat. His early training, when he
fought with Lip-lip and the whole puppy-pack, stood him in good stead.
There was the tenacity with which he clung to the earth. No dog could
make him lose his footing. This was the favourite trick of the wolf
breeds--to rush in upon him, either directly or with an unexpected
swerve, in the hope of striking his shoulder and overthrowing him.
Mackenzie hounds, Eskimo and Labrador dogs, huskies and Malemutes--all
tried it on him, and all failed. He was never known to lose his footing.
Men told this to one another, and looked each time to see it happen; but
White Fang always disappointed them.

Then there was his lightning quickness. It gave him a tremendous
advantage over his antagonists. No matter what their fighting
experience, they had never encountered a dog that moved so swiftly as he.
Also to be reckoned with, was the immediateness of his attack. The
average dog was accustomed to the preliminaries of snarling and bristling
and growling, and the average dog was knocked off his feet and finished
before he had begun to fight or recovered from his surprise. So often
did this happen, that it became the custom to hold White Fang until the
other dog went through its preliminaries, was good and ready, and even
made the first attack.

But greatest of all the advantages in White Fang's favour, was his
experience. He knew more about fighting than did any of the dogs that
faced him. He had fought more fights, knew how to meet more tricks and
methods, and had more tricks himself, while his own method was scarcely
to be improved upon.

As the time went by, he had fewer and fewer fights. Men despaired of
matching him with an equal, and Beauty Smith was compelled to pit wolves
against him. These were trapped by the Indians for the purpose, and a
fight between White Fang and a wolf was always sure to draw a crowd.
Once, a full-grown female lynx was secured, and this time White Fang
fought for his life. Her quickness matched his; her ferocity equalled
his; while he fought with his fangs alone, and she fought with her sharp-
clawed feet as well.

But after the lynx, all fighting ceased for White Fang. There were no
more animals with which to fight--at least, there was none considered
worthy of fighting with him. So he remained on exhibition until spring,
when one Tim Keenan, a faro-dealer, arrived in the land. With him came
the first bull-dog that had ever entered the Klondike. That this dog and
White Fang should come together was inevitable, and for a week the
anticipated fight was the mainspring of conversation in certain quarters
of the town.