Part 6 (1/2)

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 hi his face a second time He backed farther away All the old ain and passed into the grave fro her puppy and stopping now and then to snarl at hi without her Her otten There was no place for her in his sches, as there was no place for hi, stupid and bewildered, thewhat it was all about, when Kiche attacked hiether fro allowed himself to be driven away This was a female of his kind, and it was a law of his kind that theabout this law, for it was no generalisation of theacquired by experience of the world He knew it as a secret proe of instinct--of the sahts, and that made him fear death and the unknown

The er, heavier, andthe lines laid down by his heredity and his environment His heredity was a life-stuff that may be likened to clay It possessedmoulded into many different forive it a particular for never come in to the fires of man, the Wild would have iven hi 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 beingit He was beco more morose, more uncos were learning more and more that it was better to be at peace with hireatly with the passage of each day

White Fang, seeth in all his qualities, nevertheless suffered frohed at The laughter ofthe they pleased except hihter was turned upon hinified, soed him and upset him that for hours he would behave like a de 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 flehen White Fang cahter

In the third year of his life there careat 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 al 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 anier There ailing in the village, where the women and children ithout in order that what little they had o 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 s 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 s 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 ti, 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 hi things He would lie concealed for hours, following every , with a patience as huge as the hunger he suffered froround Even then, White Fang was not pre before the squirrel could gain a tree-refuge Then, and not until then, would he flash frorey projectile, incredibly swift, never failing its h

Successful as he ith squirrels, there was one difficulty that prevented hih squirrels So he was driven to hunt still ser beco out wood-round 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 gaht He even robbed Grey Beaver's snare of a rabbit at a tih 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 faone with hist his wild brethren As it was, he ran the young wolf down and killed and ate him

Fortune seemed to favour hi to kill Again, when he eak, it was his luck that none of the larger preying ani frory wolf- pack ran full tilt upon hi, cruel chase, but he was better nourished than they, and in the end outran the 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 re ca Young life had little chance in such a fa but affectionate But White Fang did not rown his mother So he turned tail philosophically and trotted on up the strea to the left, where he found the lair of the lynx ho 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 aca 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 alar 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 thehis back It was an involuntary bristling on his part, the physical state that in the past had always acco 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 tihly 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 resu the base of the bluff

One day, not long after, he cae 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 ahts and sounds and scents were faed to a new place But sights and sounds and smells were different from those he had last had when he fled away fro Contented sounds saluted his ear, and when he heard the angry voice of a woer that proceeds from a full stomach And there was a sone He caht to Grey Beaver's tepee Grey Beaver was not there; but Kloo-kooch welcoht fish, and he lay down to wait Grey Beaver's co

PART IV

CHAPTER I

--THE ENEMY OF HIS KIND

Had there been in White Fang's nature any possibility, noto fraternise with his kind, such possibility was irretrievably destroyed when he was s 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 hi brush of a tail and his perpetually retreating hind-quarters for everjust as bitterly hated the to hi 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 hiave his order for the start, thatforward at White Fang

There was no defence for hi lash of the whip into his face Only re horde with his tail and hind-quarters These were scarcely fit weapons hich tohis own nature and pride with every leap he

One cannot violate the pro that nature recoil upon itself Such a recoil is like that of a hair,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 i 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 ene 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 s were unhitched, huddled near to the Gods for protection, White Fang disdained such protection He walked boldly about the caht for what he had suffered in the day In the time before he was et out of his way But noas different Excited by the day- long pursuit of him, swayed subconsciously by the insistent iteration on their brains of the sight of hi ofthest theress was rowl The very ated with hatred and malice, and this but served to increase the hatred and malice within him

When Mit-sah cried out his co obeyed At first this caused trouble for the other dogs All of the upon the hated leader only to find the tables turned Behind hi in his hand So the dogs came to understand that when the tea was to be let alone But when White Fang stopped without orders, then it was allowed the upon him and destroy hi 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 his could never learn the lesson to leave hi defiance at hiht would have to be learned over again, to be as ireater 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 doenerations Much of the Wild had been lost, so that to the and ever warring But to hi the Wild He symbolised it, was its personification: so that when they showed their teeth to hiainst the powers of destruction that lurked in the shadows of the forest and in the dark beyond the cas did learn, and that was to keep together White Fang was too terrible for any of thele- handed They met him with the mass-formation, otherwise he would have killed theht As it was, he never had a chance to kill the 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 tea the with White Fang

On the other hand, try as they would, they could not kill White Fang He was too quick for theht places and always backed out of it when they bade fair to surround hi a to the earth with the sa to life For thatwarfare 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 th White Fang was bitter and implacable The clay of his And so terribly did he live this vendetta that Grey Beaver, fierce savage hi's ferocity Never, he swore, had there been the like of this anies swore likehen they considered the tale of his killings a was nearly five years old, Grey Beaver took hi res of thethe 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 hihter They bristled up to hi no ti into action like a steel spring, was at their throats and destroying the and while they were yet in the throes of surprise

He beca He econoth, never tussled He was in too quickly for that, and, if he ain 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 ser It s, touching no living thing It was the Wild still clinging to hi had been accentuated by the Isher 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 his he encountered had no chance against hiot away, himself untouched in either event In the natural course of things there were exceptions to this There were ti on to hiet away; and there were ti scored deeply on hihter had he becoe 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 hi 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 e of an action, his brain without conscious effort, knew the space that limited that action and the time required for its co, 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 e ani 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 a 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 exciteold-hunters were going up the Yukon to Dawson and the Klondike Still hundreds of oal, nevertheless many of them had been on the way for a year, and the least any of theet 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 cout-sewna 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 suoods

It was at Fort Yukon that White Fang saw his first white men As compared with the Indians he had known, they were to his, a race of superior Gods They i superior power, and it is on power that Godhead rests White Fang did not reason it out, did not in his eneralisation that the white Gods weremore, and yet none the less potent As, in his puppyhood, the loo 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 ofThey possessed greater mastery overwhich was Grey Beaver And yet Grey Beaver was as a child-God a only felt these things He was not conscious of the, that ani now perfor that the white men were the superior Gods In the first place he was very suspicious of the what unknown terrors were theirs, what unknown hurts they could ad noticed by the around and watching them fros that were near to thereat curiosity to theht their eyes at once, and they pointed hi 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 hi 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 ain 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 coht

But if the white Gods were all-powerful, their dogs did not a with those that caular shapes and sizes Soed--too long They had hair instead of fur, and a few had very little hair at that And none of theht

As an eneht with thehty contempt They were soft and helpless,to accoth what he acco at hi to the side They did not knohat had become of hi the his stroke at the throat

So rolled in the dirt, to be pounced upon and torn to pieces by the pack of Indian dogs that waited White Fang ise He had long since learned that the Gods were s 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 finishi+ng work It was then that the whitetheir 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 greise in their oay; and in this White Fang greith them They learned that it hen 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 e vengeance on the offenders One white , a setter, torn to pieces before his eyes, drew a revolver He fired rapidly, six ti--another 's consciousness

White Fang enjoyed it all He did not love his kind, and he was shrewd enough to escape hurt his had been a diversion After a time it became his occupation There was no work for hi wealthy So White Fang hung around the landing with the disreputable gang of Indian dogs, waiting for steaan After a few ot 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 le 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 punished Gods