Part 6 (2/2)

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- that prowled in the darkness around the fires of the pri close to the fires, were reshaping their instincts, learning to fear the Wild out of which they had coeneration, 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, fro this they had protected both themselves and the Gods whose companionshi+p they shared

And so, fresh fro-plank and out upon the Yukon shore had but to see White Fang to experience the irresistible iht 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 inheritedfor the wolf, and they remembered the ancient feud

All of which served to ht of his upon him, so much the better for hiitiiti had he first seen the light of day in a lonely lair and fought his first fights with the ptar had his puppyhood been made bitter by the persecution of Lip-lip and the whole puppy pack It ht 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 s Had Grey Beaver possessed the pluht have sounded the deeps of White Fang's nature and brought up to the surface all s had not been so The clay of White Fang had been moulded until he beca and ferocious, the enemy of all his kind

CHAPTER II

--THE MAD God

A small nu in the country They called the the but disdain The men who came ashore from the steamers were newcomers They were known as chechaquos, and they alilted at the application of the na-powder This was the invidious distinction between thehs, who, forsooth, - powder

All of which is neither here nor there Thetherief Especially did they enjoy the havoc worked a and his disreputable gang When a steamer arrived, the men of the fort made it a point always to come down to the bank and see the fun They looked forward to it with as s, while they were not slow to appreciate the savage and crafty part played by White Fang

But there was one st the at the first sound of a steaht was over and White Fang and the pack had scattered, he would return slowly to the fort, his face heavy with regret So its death-cry under the fangs of the pack, this man would be unable to contain hiht And always he had a sharp and covetous eye for White Fang

This man was called ”Beauty” by the other eneral he was known in the country as Beauty S save a beauty To antithesis was due his nagardly with hire frare head Its apex ht be likened to a point In fact, in his boyhood, before he had been named Beauty by his fellows, he had been called ”Pinhead”

Backward, from the apex, his head slanted down to his neck and forward it slanted uncoinning here, as though regretting her parsimony, Nature had spread his features with a lavish hand His eyes were large, and between them was the distance of two eyes His face, in relation to the rest of hiious In order to discover the necessary area, Nature had given hinathous jaw It ide and heavy, and protruded outward and down until it seemed to rest on his chest Possibly this appearance was due to the weariness of the slender neck, unable properly to support so great a burden

This jaw gave the i lacked Perhaps it was froe At any rate, it was a lie Beauty Smith was known far and wide as the weakest of weak-kneed and snivelling cowards To coe and yellohile the two eye-teeth, larger than their fellows, showed under his lean lips like fangs His eyes were yellow and s of all her tubes It was the sarowth,on his head and sprouting out of his face in unexpected tufts and bunches, in appearance like clurain

In short, Beauty Smith was a monstrosity, and the blame of it lay elsewhere He was not responsible The clay of hi for the other ery They did not despise him Rather did they tolerate him in a broad human way, as one tolerates any creature evilly treated in the es made them dread a shot in the back or poison in their coffee But so, and whatever else his shortcos, Beauty Smith could cook

This was the hted in his ferocious prowess, and desired to possess hi began by ignoring him Later on, when the overtures beca bristled and bared his teeth and backed away He did not like the man The feel of him was bad He sensed the evil in him, and feared the extended hand and the attempts at soft-spoken speech Because of all this, he hated the s si easement and satisfaction and surcease froood is liked The bad stands for all things that are fraught with disco's feel of Beauty Smith was bad From the man's distorted body and twistedfrom malarial marshes, ca, not by the five senses alone, but by other and re that the nant with hurtfulness, and therefore a thing bad, and wisely to be hated

White Fang was in Grey Beaver's camp when Beauty Smith first visited it At the faint sound of his distant feet, before he caan to bristle He had been lying down in an abandon of comfort, but he arose quickly, and, as the e of the camp He did not knohat they said, but he could see the ether Once, the h the hand were just descending upon hihed at this; and White Fang slunk away to the sheltering woods, his head turned to observe as he glided softly over the ground

Grey Beaver refused to sell the dog He had grown rich with his trading and stood in need of nothing Besides, White Fang was a valuable ani he had ever owned, and the best leader Further like hiht He killed other dogs as easily as hted up at this, and he licked his thin lips with an eager tongue) No, White Fang was not for sale at any price

But Beauty Smith knew the ways of Indians He visited Grey Beaver's camp often, and hidden under his coat was always a black bottle or so One of the potencies of whisky is the breeding of thirst Grey Beaver got the thirst His fevered an to cla fluid; while his brain, thrust all awry by the unwonted stith to obtain it The money he had received for his furs and o It went faster and faster, and the shorter his rew his teoods and te reious possession in itself that grew ious with every sober breath he drew Then it was that Beauty S; but this time the price offered was in bottles, not dollars, and Grey Beaver's ears wereyou take uht,” was his last word

The bottles were delivered, but after two days ”You ketch u,” were Beauty S slunk into cah of content The dreaded white God was not there For days hishad been compelled to avoid the camp He did not knohat evil was threatened by those insistent hands He knew only that they did threaten evil of some sort, and that it was best for him to keep out of their reach

But scarcely had he lain dohen Grey Beaver staggered over to hi around his neck He sat down beside White Fang, holding the end of the thong in his hand In the other hand he held a bottle, which, from time to tiling noises

An hour of this passed, when the vibrations of feet in contact with the ground foreran the one who approached White Fang heard it first, and he was bristling with recognition while Grey Beaver still nodded stupidly White Fang tried to draw the thong softly out of his htly and Grey Beaver roused himself

Beauty S He snarled softly up at the thing of fear, watching keenly the deportan to descend upon his head His soft snarl grew tense and harsh The hand continued slowly to descend, while he crouched beneath it, eyeing itshorter and shorter as, with quickening breath, it approached its culs like a snake The hand was jerked back, and the teeth cahtened and angry Grey Beaver clouted White Fang alongside the head, so that he cowered down close to the earth in respectful obedience

White Fang's suspicious eyes followed every o away and return with a stout club Then the end of the thong was given over to hi grew taut White Fang resisted it Grey Beaver clouted hiet up and follow He obeyed, but with a rush, hurling hi hi for this He swung the club s down upon the ground Grey Beaver laughed and nodded approval Beauty S crawled limply and dizzily to his feet

He did not rush a second time One smash from the club was sufficient to convince him that the white God kne to handle it, and he was too wise to fight the inevitable So he followed s, yet snarling softly under his breath But Beauty Smith kept a wary eye on him, and the club was held always ready to strike

At the fort Beauty S waited an hour Then he applied his teeth to the thong, and in the space of ten seconds was free He had wasted no ti The thong was cut across, diagonally, al looked up at the fort, at the sa Then he turned and trotted back to Grey Beaver's cae and terrible God He had given himself to Grey Beaver, and to Grey Beaver he considered he still belonged

But what had occurred before was repeated--with a difference Grey Beaver againturned him over to Beauty Smith And here here the difference ca Tied securely, White Fang could only rage futilely and endure the punishment Club and ere both used upon hi he had ever received in his life Even the big beating given him in his puppyhood by Grey Beaver was mild compared with this

Beauty Sloated over his victi the whip or club and listened to White Fang's cries of pain and to his helpless bellows and snarls For Beauty S and snivelling hied himself, in turn, upon creatures weaker than he All life likes power, and Beauty Sst his own kind, he fell back upon the lesser creatures and there vindicated the life that was in him But Beauty Smith had not created himself, and no blame was to be attached to him He had coence This had constituted the clay of him, and it had not been kindlybeaten When Grey Beaver tied the thong around his neck, and passed the end of the thong into Beauty S knew that it was his God's will for hio with Beauty Smith And when Beauty Smith left him tied outside the fort, he knew that it was Beauty Smith's will that he should remain there Therefore, he had disobeyed the will of both the Gods, and earned the consequent punishe owners in the past, and he had seen the runaways beaten as he was being beaten He ise, and yet in the nature of hireater than wisdom One of these was fidelity He did not love Grey Beaver, yet, even in the face of his will and his anger, he was faithful to him He could not help it This faithfulness was a quality of the clay that composed him It was the quality that was peculiarly the possession of his kind; the quality that set apart his species from all other species; the quality that has enabled the wolf and the wild dog to come in from the open and be the coed back to the fort But this tiive up a God easily, and so with White Fang Grey Beaver was his own particular God, and, in spite of Grey Beaver's will, White Fang still clung to hiive him up Grey Beaver had betrayed and forsaken hi had he surrendered himself body and soul to Grey Beaver There had been no reservation on White Fang's part, and the bond was not to be broken easily

So, in the night, when theapplied his teeth to the stick that held him The as seasoned and dry, and it was tied so closely to his neck that he could scarcely get his teeth to it It was only by the severest etting the wood between his teeth, and barely between his teeth at that; and it was only by the exercise of an ih h the stick This was sos were not supposed to do It was unprecedented But White Fang did it, trotting away fro, with the end of the stick hanging to his neck

He ise But had he been one back to Grey Beaver who had already twice betrayed him But there was his faithfulness, and he went back to be betrayed yet a third ti around his neck by Grey Beaver, and again Beauty Smith came to claim him And this time he was beaten even more severely than before

Grey Beaver looked on stolidly while the white er his dog When the beating was over White Fang was sick A soft southland dog would have died under it, but not he His school of life had been sterner, and he was hireat vitality His clutch on life was too strong But he was very sick At first he was unable to drag hi, and Beauty Smith had to wait half-an-hour for hi, he followed at Beauty Smith's heels back to the fort

But noas tied with a chain that defied his teeth, and he strove in vain, by lunging, to draw the staple from the timber into which it was driven After a few days, sober and bankrupt, Grey Beaver departed up the Porcupine on his long journey to the Mackenzie White Fang remained on the Yukon, the property of ato know in its consciousness of , Beauty Smith was a veritable, if terrible, God He was aof madness; he knew only that he must submit to the will of this new master, obey his every whim and fancy

CHAPTER III

--THE REIGN OF HATE

Under the tutelage of thebecame 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 ith petty tor's susceptibility to laughter, and h at hihter was uproarious and scornful, and at the sa At such tie he was evenhad been merely the enemy of his kind, withal a ferocious enes, 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 hih the slats of the pen, the dogs that acconantly 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