PART IV - CHAPTER I

PART IV - 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.