PART III - CHAPTER I

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, laying 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.